18 ms·

Why Content Is King

94 points by nbashaw 6y ago

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ddmd 6y ago
I am not sure that it is about content. It is more about some important factors of contemporary businesses and especially startups: - Scale Economies - the more you invest the more profit you get - Network Economies - platform business models like Amazon - Counter Positioning - Vanguard and ETFs - Switching Costs - this is why Facebook still exists - Branding - - Cornered Resource - patents etc. - Process Power - this is why governments still exist :)
sid6376 6y ago
I really enjoyed reading this article. One key takeaway for me was how its in the interest of companies like Substack to initially have a lot of high profile creators defect from their motherships (like a lot of journalists have recently done) and then eventually decrease reliance on the superstars so that Substack's value doesnt immediately decrease once these superstars leave. Very related to this article is this article about the need for a creator middle class. https://li.substack.com/p/building-the-middle-class-of-the https://li.substack.com/p/building-the-middle-class-of-the
enriquto 6y ago
A good start would be to stop using this stupid terminology. Quoting RMS [0]: I think it is ok for authors (please let's not call them creators, they are not gods) to ask for money for copies of their works (please let's not devalue these works by calling them content) in order to gain income (the term compensation falsely implies it is a matter of making up for some kind of damages). [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20171108235001/http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/wsis-pct/2006-April/001115.html https://web.archive.org/web/20171108235001/http://mail.fsfeu...
- Veen 6y ago
  "Consuming" always irritates me. We don't read written works or watch videos, we consume content.
  - blfr 6y ago
    The new way of interacting with videos and other media online does warrant a different term. Many people really don't watch videos, they consume content, ie. scroll or swipe through an endless stream of tweets/videos/reddit posts stopping and then moving on. It's just like watching a movie vs watching TV, reading versus paging through the newspaper, etc.
    - Veen 6y ago
      If people called that specific phenomenon "consumption", it wouldn't bother me. But they use it much more broadly.
    - enriquto 6y ago
      > It's just like watching a movie vs watching TV yet here you use the same word without problem, don't you? I guess an appropriate word for "casually reading" would be "browsing" ?
    - username90 6y ago
      > Many people really don't watch videos, they consume content, ie. scroll or swipe through an endless stream of tweets/videos/reddit posts stopping and then moving on. How is that different from plopping down the sofa, turn on the TV and watch the endless stream of content being broadcast to you? This isn't really a new thing, most people consumed TV that way before digital consumption became a thing.
  - powvans 6y ago
    Generally consuming something means that it no longer exists after it has been consumed. A fire consumes a home and it can no longer be lived in. I consume a hamburger and therefore you cannot eat it. Content on the internet isn't consumed in this sense. If anything it's your own time and attention that is consumed when watching videos.
friendlybus 6y ago
Content sells the tech. The tech makes the most money though. Microsoft is 1 tril bigger in market cap than Disney. Strange to use a Bill gates quote and then discuss Disney films. Nintendo as a company makes more money on selling consoles, than on Zelda. The article touches on this and could expand on it. No new tech launch is going to work without content, so in that sense it is king, but the money is in the tech.
- puranjay 6y ago
  It's a little strange relationship. Tech without content can't survive. Whereas good content can spread far and wide without tech.
  - arthurcolle 6y ago
    It can't though. Books, printing presses, etc. are all forms of technology. Good content can't as easily propagate and proliferate without the infrastructure created by the tooling that supports the activity. You might be inclined to state that this belabors the point of being specific about modern Web technologies, but still - the medium is the message. They are still linked even if the underlying technologies change.
    - puranjay 6y ago
      Good content can't propagate as fast without technology, but it can spread far and wide. The "tech" used in spreading the Iliad and the Ramayana was the spoken word. And yet they spread across countries and cultures.
      - coldtea 6y ago
        Well, good tech can propagate even further and wider. Nobody cared/cares (where nobody=very few) for the Iliad or Ramayama on the other sides of the world that created them. But technologies created on each side quickly reached the other side or spread all over the globe. This includes primitive technologies which we tend to forget they are technologies like agriculture, the wheel, iron forging, etc.
dmje 6y ago
Conflating "media" and "content" is the issue here. Facebook is successful because of content. Google+ failed because there wasn't any content. Heading tech up against content in some way is also a silly argument. Good tech supports the transmission of content. Bad tech gets in the way. Good content is enabled by good tech. Ultimately, a web page with some stirring, moving or life changing words on it is going to have more potential impact than all the NerdMagic in the world. But: they're heavily codependent.
- throwaway3699 6y ago
  Most content on Facebook is garbage. So more accurately it's addictive content that fits the algorithm which is important. For that to happen, you need users. Typical chicken and egg problem.
  - digitalengineer 6y ago
    Garbage content is part of the plan. That is literally what makes it addictive. See ‘The Hook Model’. Basically people ‘gamble’ for good content like they do on a slot machine.
- cblconfederate 6y ago
  > Google+ failed Google itself has lots of (free) content. Search is a medium While stirring content may exist (where is it?) , it rarely meets big tech (so it can be win-win for both)
  - rizzom5000 6y ago
    Youtube, Twitch, TikTok, Instagram, Hulu, Netflix, etc. appear to firmly support that content is king; at least in some small corner of the internet.
    - raverbashing 6y ago
      And maybe even more important, content discovery is king Either you're very good at discovery or you have to be great at curation/creation
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
buro9 6y ago
Distribution is King. Those who control distribution set the price.
- onebot 6y ago
  Probably true. However, Apple and Netflix are now heavily in the content business. So maybe content + distribution is the true winner.
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    That’s because distribution is currently “open” for some definition of “open”, due to the advent of internet protocols and risk of legislation. If the US cable TV companies wanted to shut down access from Apple/Netflix/Disney and force them to go via the cable TV company like they used to, they technically could (cable TV internet is the only high download bandwidth option for most Americans). They wouldn’t brazenly do this by shutting down access completely, but they are doing this via throttling and I could see rate limiting certain services in the future unless you pay more, etc. Or Comcast can exempt itself from data caps. At the end of the day, the owner of the pipe that comes into your house or the wireless signals has the technical power to control what comes in and out and at what cost. Which is why it should be a publicly owned utility.
  - dredmorbius 6y ago
    Would you prefer to have amazing content with no distribution, or miserable content with universal distribution?
fmajid 6y ago
Content is not king, and Andrew Odlyzko explains why: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=235282 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=235282 At the time he wrote it, the whole of Hollywood yearly revenue made less than 2 weeks of telcos’, and SMS by itself was worth more (SMS has been commoditized since, to the benefit of Apple and Facebook).
- cbozeman 6y ago
  Wow, thank you very much for the link. Now I see what's gone wrong with all the ISPs in America. > “I don’t want to be anyone’s dumb pipes,” says Hindery. “If all you do is racks and servers, that’s dumb. What we’re doing is melding the network and the content. This is a fancy way of saying, "I'm not content to just create a huge, high-speed network that services as many customers as possible, I want to extract yet more revenue out of a business I probably don't understand and can't be expected to competently manage." Trying to explain to these idiots that the only thing an ISP - be it Comcast, AT&T, Charter, Spectrum, Frontier, whoever, can offer me, is a great big fat dumb fucking pipe, is like trying to explain the finer points of Shakespeare to a mollusk.
- rambojazz 6y ago
  I wish I could read that paper, but it's behind a wall. Got a public link?
  - fmajid 6y ago
    Er, just click on the blue "Download PDF" button. https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=005106086102117069024119068081066007051038081078058007068004069031073010088096071010013069100083011121070048087005021071080087120093011079097031096085075123090120124010023028095001101074099&EXT=pdf&INDEX=TRUE https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=0051060861021170...
    - rambojazz 6y ago
      It doesn't work, nor does "Open PDF in Browser". It reloads the same page or it asks me to create a "SSRN Account".
blackcats 6y ago
No, PageRank is king. AI isn’t at the level of understanding content yet
- marcosdumay 6y ago
  Yeah, that difference is gonna fix itself at some time. Monopolies can subvert natural human behavior for some time, but if Google won't make its AI content aware, it will eventually stop to matter.
beastman82 6y ago
While that quote is Gates, the "Content is King" phrase _is_ from a media tycoon: Sumner Redstone.
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  Even Redstone appropriated the phrase from elsewhere. Though it’s often misattributed to Bill Gates, Sumner Redstone popularised the phrase “content is king” which was used in a 1974 book, and pre-dates even that. See: https://lgkmarketingcc.com/content-king-said-better/ https://lgkmarketingcc.com/content-king-said-better/ The book seems to be J. W. Click, Russell N. Baird, Magazine Editing and Production. W. C. Brown Company, 1974, 274 pages. (https://www.worldcat.org/title/magazine-editing-and-production/oclc/1009138 https://www.worldcat.org/title/magazine-editing-and-producti... (Google Books preview: https://books.google.com/books?id=lMpHwLnvsvAC&q=%22content+is+king%22&dq=%22content+is+king%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiwiLK2q5brAhVOK80KHdbBDu0Q6AEILTAB https://books.google.com/books?id=lMpHwLnvsvAC&q=%22content+...) Earlier appearances in the 1960s refer to educational films (https://www.worldcat.org/title/toward-improved-learning-a-collection-of-significant-reprints-for-the-medical-educator/oclc/855419713 https://www.worldcat.org/title/toward-improved-learning-a-co...). (Google Books: https://books.google.com/books?id=LiQgAQAAMAAJ&q=%22content+is+king%22&dq=%22content+is+king%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi87Kaoq5brAhUYCs0KHdwWC2QQ6AEIMDAB https://books.google.com/books?id=LiQgAQAAMAAJ&q=%22content+...)
dredmorbius 6y ago
First, the phrase "content is king" doesn't originate with Bill Gates, or Sumner Redstone, who popularised it. It appears in a 1974 book, and pre-dates even that. See: https://lgkmarketingcc.com/content-king-said-better/ https://lgkmarketingcc.com/content-king-said-better/ The book seems to be J. W. Click, Russell N. Baird, Magazine Editing and Production (https://www.worldcat.org/title/magazine-editing-and-production/oclc/1009138 https://www.worldcat.org/title/magazine-editing-and-producti...). W. C. Brown Company, 1974, 274 pages. (Google Books preview: https://books.google.com/books?id=lMpHwLnvsvAC&q=%22content+is+king%22&dq=%22content+is+king%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiwiLK2q5brAhVOK80KHdbBDu0Q6AEILTAB https://books.google.com/books?id=lMpHwLnvsvAC&q=%22content+...) Earlier appearances in the 1960s refer to educational films (https://www.worldcat.org/title/toward-improved-learning-a-collection-of-significant-reprints-for-the-medical-educator/oclc/855419713 https://www.worldcat.org/title/toward-improved-learning-a-co...). (Google Books: https://books.google.com/books?id=LiQgAQAAMAAJ&q=%22content+is+king%22&dq=%22content+is+king%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi87Kaoq5brAhUYCs0KHdwWC2QQ6AEIMDAB https://books.google.com/books?id=LiQgAQAAMAAJ&q=%22content+...) A discussion based on this premise should at least get the provenance straight. Aguments over provenance notwithstanding, my view is that the aphorism is a convenient bit of stage distraction attractive to media monopolists themselves aware of the real truth: network control is emperor. Andrew Odlyzko argues this; https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=235282 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=235282 (as @fmajid notes elsewhere in this thread) And this goes beyond just getting the proprietor's cut, the vigorish, skimming your 5, or 10, or 30%. Central control of a network means deciding what that network is. Where it begins, where it ends, what goes in, what comes out, who can receive, who can send, what interactions are possible, speeds and latencies, what messages are heard, what are not, who pays, who gets paid, who plays for free. These factors are wholly ignored by contemporary US (Borkian) antitrust doctrine. It's not just the vig. Sumner Redstone died this past August at 97; (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/12/obituaries/sumner-redstone-dead.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/12/obituaries/sumner-redston...) (NYTimes).
- prox 6y ago
  Awesome references, and I agree. Interestingly, we have been moving to several networks as walled gardens and left the open internet (to some degree)
sys_64738 6y ago
Bill Gates is the same guy who said I only needed 640K in my Mac.
SarikayaKomzin 6y ago
As many have pointed out, this is an obviously oversimplified maxim. But I’d like to add two reasons why I think it is a useful heuristic despite that. 1. Great content can’t be commodified, despite the industry’s best efforts. 2. Content lives in extremistan. [1]. Though the average piece of content has little upside, the upside of a great piece of content is nearly limitless. At the very least, content is a “prince” alongside distribution (network effects). [1] “Taleb provides another example of Extremistan: book publishing. Suppose one randomly chooses a thousand authors, and adds up the total number of books they have sold. Now, add the bestselling author in the world, J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter books. Her book sales with vastly exceed the total of the other thousand authors.” https://people.wou.edu/~shawd/mediocristan--extremistan.html https://people.wou.edu/~shawd/mediocristan--extremistan.html
getdafookoutahe 6y ago
content is no longer king. Just paying Google or Facebook is the king these days.

94 points by nbashaw 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

ddmd 6y ago

I am not sure that it is about content. It is more about some important factors of contemporary businesses and especially startups: - Scale Economies - the more you invest the more profit you get - Network Economies - platform business models like Amazon - Counter Positioning - Vanguard and ETFs - Switching Costs - this is why Facebook still exists - Branding - - Cornered Resource - patents etc. - Process Power - this is why governments still exist :)

sid6376 6y ago

I really enjoyed reading this article. One key takeaway for me was how its in the interest of companies like Substack to initially have a lot of high profile creators defect from their motherships (like a lot of journalists have recently done) and then eventually decrease reliance on the superstars so that Substack's value doesnt immediately decrease once these superstars leave. Very related to this article is this article about the need for a creator middle class. https://li.substack.com/p/building-the-middle-class-of-the https://li.substack.com/p/building-the-middle-class-of-the

enriquto 6y ago

A good start would be to stop using this stupid terminology. Quoting RMS [0]: I think it is ok for authors (please let's not call them creators, they are not gods) to ask for money for copies of their works (please let's not devalue these works by calling them content) in order to gain income (the term compensation falsely implies it is a matter of making up for some kind of damages). [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20171108235001/http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/wsis-pct/2006-April/001115.html https://web.archive.org/web/20171108235001/http://mail.fsfeu...

Veen 6y ago
"Consuming" always irritates me. We don't read written works or watch videos, we consume content.
- blfr 6y ago
  The new way of interacting with videos and other media online does warrant a different term. Many people really don't watch videos, they consume content, ie. scroll or swipe through an endless stream of tweets/videos/reddit posts stopping and then moving on. It's just like watching a movie vs watching TV, reading versus paging through the newspaper, etc.
  - Veen 6y ago
    If people called that specific phenomenon "consumption", it wouldn't bother me. But they use it much more broadly.
  - enriquto 6y ago
    > It's just like watching a movie vs watching TV yet here you use the same word without problem, don't you? I guess an appropriate word for "casually reading" would be "browsing" ?
  - username90 6y ago
    > Many people really don't watch videos, they consume content, ie. scroll or swipe through an endless stream of tweets/videos/reddit posts stopping and then moving on. How is that different from plopping down the sofa, turn on the TV and watch the endless stream of content being broadcast to you? This isn't really a new thing, most people consumed TV that way before digital consumption became a thing.
- powvans 6y ago
  Generally consuming something means that it no longer exists after it has been consumed. A fire consumes a home and it can no longer be lived in. I consume a hamburger and therefore you cannot eat it. Content on the internet isn't consumed in this sense. If anything it's your own time and attention that is consumed when watching videos.

friendlybus 6y ago

Content sells the tech. The tech makes the most money though. Microsoft is 1 tril bigger in market cap than Disney. Strange to use a Bill gates quote and then discuss Disney films. Nintendo as a company makes more money on selling consoles, than on Zelda. The article touches on this and could expand on it. No new tech launch is going to work without content, so in that sense it is king, but the money is in the tech.

puranjay 6y ago
It's a little strange relationship. Tech without content can't survive. Whereas good content can spread far and wide without tech.
- arthurcolle 6y ago
  It can't though. Books, printing presses, etc. are all forms of technology. Good content can't as easily propagate and proliferate without the infrastructure created by the tooling that supports the activity. You might be inclined to state that this belabors the point of being specific about modern Web technologies, but still - the medium is the message. They are still linked even if the underlying technologies change.
  - puranjay 6y ago
    Good content can't propagate as fast without technology, but it can spread far and wide. The "tech" used in spreading the Iliad and the Ramayana was the spoken word. And yet they spread across countries and cultures.
    - coldtea 6y ago
      Well, good tech can propagate even further and wider. Nobody cared/cares (where nobody=very few) for the Iliad or Ramayama on the other sides of the world that created them. But technologies created on each side quickly reached the other side or spread all over the globe. This includes primitive technologies which we tend to forget they are technologies like agriculture, the wheel, iron forging, etc.

dmje 6y ago

Conflating "media" and "content" is the issue here. Facebook is successful because of content. Google+ failed because there wasn't any content. Heading tech up against content in some way is also a silly argument. Good tech supports the transmission of content. Bad tech gets in the way. Good content is enabled by good tech. Ultimately, a web page with some stirring, moving or life changing words on it is going to have more potential impact than all the NerdMagic in the world. But: they're heavily codependent.

throwaway3699 6y ago
Most content on Facebook is garbage. So more accurately it's addictive content that fits the algorithm which is important. For that to happen, you need users. Typical chicken and egg problem.
- digitalengineer 6y ago
  Garbage content is part of the plan. That is literally what makes it addictive. See ‘The Hook Model’. Basically people ‘gamble’ for good content like they do on a slot machine.
cblconfederate 6y ago
> Google+ failed Google itself has lots of (free) content. Search is a medium While stirring content may exist (where is it?) , it rarely meets big tech (so it can be win-win for both)
- rizzom5000 6y ago
  Youtube, Twitch, TikTok, Instagram, Hulu, Netflix, etc. appear to firmly support that content is king; at least in some small corner of the internet.
  - raverbashing 6y ago
    And maybe even more important, content discovery is king Either you're very good at discovery or you have to be great at curation/creation

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

buro9 6y ago

Distribution is King. Those who control distribution set the price.

onebot 6y ago
Probably true. However, Apple and Netflix are now heavily in the content business. So maybe content + distribution is the true winner.
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  That’s because distribution is currently “open” for some definition of “open”, due to the advent of internet protocols and risk of legislation. If the US cable TV companies wanted to shut down access from Apple/Netflix/Disney and force them to go via the cable TV company like they used to, they technically could (cable TV internet is the only high download bandwidth option for most Americans). They wouldn’t brazenly do this by shutting down access completely, but they are doing this via throttling and I could see rate limiting certain services in the future unless you pay more, etc. Or Comcast can exempt itself from data caps. At the end of the day, the owner of the pipe that comes into your house or the wireless signals has the technical power to control what comes in and out and at what cost. Which is why it should be a publicly owned utility.
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  Would you prefer to have amazing content with no distribution, or miserable content with universal distribution?

fmajid 6y ago

Content is not king, and Andrew Odlyzko explains why: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=235282 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=235282 At the time he wrote it, the whole of Hollywood yearly revenue made less than 2 weeks of telcos’, and SMS by itself was worth more (SMS has been commoditized since, to the benefit of Apple and Facebook).

cbozeman 6y ago
Wow, thank you very much for the link. Now I see what's gone wrong with all the ISPs in America. > “I don’t want to be anyone’s dumb pipes,” says Hindery. “If all you do is racks and servers, that’s dumb. What we’re doing is melding the network and the content. This is a fancy way of saying, "I'm not content to just create a huge, high-speed network that services as many customers as possible, I want to extract yet more revenue out of a business I probably don't understand and can't be expected to competently manage." Trying to explain to these idiots that the only thing an ISP - be it Comcast, AT&T, Charter, Spectrum, Frontier, whoever, can offer me, is a great big fat dumb fucking pipe, is like trying to explain the finer points of Shakespeare to a mollusk.
rambojazz 6y ago
I wish I could read that paper, but it's behind a wall. Got a public link?
- fmajid 6y ago
  Er, just click on the blue "Download PDF" button. https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=005106086102117069024119068081066007051038081078058007068004069031073010088096071010013069100083011121070048087005021071080087120093011079097031096085075123090120124010023028095001101074099&EXT=pdf&INDEX=TRUE https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=0051060861021170...
  - rambojazz 6y ago
    It doesn't work, nor does "Open PDF in Browser". It reloads the same page or it asks me to create a "SSRN Account".

blackcats 6y ago

No, PageRank is king. AI isn’t at the level of understanding content yet

marcosdumay 6y ago
Yeah, that difference is gonna fix itself at some time. Monopolies can subvert natural human behavior for some time, but if Google won't make its AI content aware, it will eventually stop to matter.

beastman82 6y ago

While that quote is Gates, the "Content is King" phrase _is_ from a media tycoon: Sumner Redstone.

dredmorbius 6y ago
Even Redstone appropriated the phrase from elsewhere. Though it’s often misattributed to Bill Gates, Sumner Redstone popularised the phrase “content is king” which was used in a 1974 book, and pre-dates even that. See: https://lgkmarketingcc.com/content-king-said-better/ https://lgkmarketingcc.com/content-king-said-better/ The book seems to be J. W. Click, Russell N. Baird, Magazine Editing and Production. W. C. Brown Company, 1974, 274 pages. (https://www.worldcat.org/title/magazine-editing-and-production/oclc/1009138 https://www.worldcat.org/title/magazine-editing-and-producti... (Google Books preview: https://books.google.com/books?id=lMpHwLnvsvAC&q=%22content+is+king%22&dq=%22content+is+king%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiwiLK2q5brAhVOK80KHdbBDu0Q6AEILTAB https://books.google.com/books?id=lMpHwLnvsvAC&q=%22content+...) Earlier appearances in the 1960s refer to educational films (https://www.worldcat.org/title/toward-improved-learning-a-collection-of-significant-reprints-for-the-medical-educator/oclc/855419713 https://www.worldcat.org/title/toward-improved-learning-a-co...). (Google Books: https://books.google.com/books?id=LiQgAQAAMAAJ&q=%22content+is+king%22&dq=%22content+is+king%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi87Kaoq5brAhUYCs0KHdwWC2QQ6AEIMDAB https://books.google.com/books?id=LiQgAQAAMAAJ&q=%22content+...)

dredmorbius 6y ago

First, the phrase "content is king" doesn't originate with Bill Gates, or Sumner Redstone, who popularised it. It appears in a 1974 book, and pre-dates even that. See: https://lgkmarketingcc.com/content-king-said-better/ https://lgkmarketingcc.com/content-king-said-better/ The book seems to be J. W. Click, Russell N. Baird, Magazine Editing and Production (https://www.worldcat.org/title/magazine-editing-and-production/oclc/1009138 https://www.worldcat.org/title/magazine-editing-and-producti...). W. C. Brown Company, 1974, 274 pages. (Google Books preview: https://books.google.com/books?id=lMpHwLnvsvAC&q=%22content+is+king%22&dq=%22content+is+king%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiwiLK2q5brAhVOK80KHdbBDu0Q6AEILTAB https://books.google.com/books?id=lMpHwLnvsvAC&q=%22content+...) Earlier appearances in the 1960s refer to educational films (https://www.worldcat.org/title/toward-improved-learning-a-collection-of-significant-reprints-for-the-medical-educator/oclc/855419713 https://www.worldcat.org/title/toward-improved-learning-a-co...). (Google Books: https://books.google.com/books?id=LiQgAQAAMAAJ&q=%22content+is+king%22&dq=%22content+is+king%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi87Kaoq5brAhUYCs0KHdwWC2QQ6AEIMDAB https://books.google.com/books?id=LiQgAQAAMAAJ&q=%22content+...) A discussion based on this premise should at least get the provenance straight. Aguments over provenance notwithstanding, my view is that the aphorism is a convenient bit of stage distraction attractive to media monopolists themselves aware of the real truth: network control is emperor. Andrew Odlyzko argues this; https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=235282 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=235282 (as @fmajid notes elsewhere in this thread) And this goes beyond just getting the proprietor's cut, the vigorish, skimming your 5, or 10, or 30%. Central control of a network means deciding what that network is. Where it begins, where it ends, what goes in, what comes out, who can receive, who can send, what interactions are possible, speeds and latencies, what messages are heard, what are not, who pays, who gets paid, who plays for free. These factors are wholly ignored by contemporary US (Borkian) antitrust doctrine. It's not just the vig. Sumner Redstone died this past August at 97; (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/12/obituaries/sumner-redstone-dead.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/12/obituaries/sumner-redston...) (NYTimes).

prox 6y ago
Awesome references, and I agree. Interestingly, we have been moving to several networks as walled gardens and left the open internet (to some degree)

sys_64738 6y ago

Bill Gates is the same guy who said I only needed 640K in my Mac.

SarikayaKomzin 6y ago

As many have pointed out, this is an obviously oversimplified maxim. But I’d like to add two reasons why I think it is a useful heuristic despite that. 1. Great content can’t be commodified, despite the industry’s best efforts. 2. Content lives in extremistan. [1]. Though the average piece of content has little upside, the upside of a great piece of content is nearly limitless. At the very least, content is a “prince” alongside distribution (network effects). [1] “Taleb provides another example of Extremistan: book publishing. Suppose one randomly chooses a thousand authors, and adds up the total number of books they have sold. Now, add the bestselling author in the world, J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter books. Her book sales with vastly exceed the total of the other thousand authors.” https://people.wou.edu/~shawd/mediocristan--extremistan.html https://people.wou.edu/~shawd/mediocristan--extremistan.html

getdafookoutahe 6y ago

content is no longer king. Just paying Google or Facebook is the king these days.