The Eventual Re-Aggregation of Unpaid Media

Word back from CTIA Wireless 2006 was that “Content is King” was once again the message to beat. PodTech has an entire channel devoted to CTIA podcasts.
Over at IT Conversations, Larry Weber, chairman and CEO of the W2 Group says that marketing is dead. It’s all about the content. He says marketing is just a wrapper around the content, and that the wrapper has to change. It’s a fascinating, nearly-hour-long collection of ideas, any two of which are enough to sketch out a business plan. Link to the mp3.
But here’s something I’m coming to realize, and I’ve been discussing it in various ways. Producing content is one thing. That’s tricky in and of itself. Distributing content is tricky. There are all kinds of companies trying their hand at that. But finding a way to get PAID for your content seems to be the biggest trick of it all. The only thing that comes to mind is the advertising model. Find sponsors who’ll pay to put spots into your content, one way or another.
Maybe this is what all media went through back in their early days. But think about television. There’s a whole SYSTEM in place to support finding new talent, trying things out (the pitch!), and then developing a programming package around that content. There isn’t exactly parity to this idea in the Internet space, and definitely not for the variety of content types out there. In most cases, the same person creating content is also trying to drum up readers/viewers/listeners, and they’re also trying to pull sponsors to the mat.
In his presentation, Weber mentions the state of newspapers in the United States at the end of the 1700s. He said there were more newspapers by far in the U.S. than in all of Europe. In Pittsburgh alone, there were 27 different papers. He connected this to blogs today.
I agree. I think there will be some eventual shakeout. There will be an aggregation of the best content into some new collected and edited format, and people will gravitate towards a few, well-considered products, instead of this current melee of millions of blogs, thousands of podcasts, and hundreds of screencasts.
Where will people go next? I think blogging has a current newness that will shake off a heavy bunch of periodic diarists and journalers. I think these new media collectives will pluck the best into their fold, and others will venture into even newer technologies by attrition. Second Life will give way to some next-gen platform that’s even more realistic. Podcasts will morph once more, maybe back away from time-shifted to real-time, leaving fewer but better quality audio content productions.
Video will actually probably expand, but in so doing, diffuse a bit. In fact, I think Videoblogging will also chew away at some of the ubiquitous text bloggers.
My own personal guess on where I will fall into this new world has a few forks: I will either land some kind of role within an organization or a federation of sorts, where I can launch content at various endpoints, or I’ll slip text media to move into more sensory-rich communication modes like illustration and video. I will no doubt seek to continue dialogues with people about the concepts of improvement, creativity, and the things that I feel passion about, but will it always be in this form? Doubtful.
I think there are maybe two years left for the current state of things with regards to blogs. Five for podcasts. Seven or ten for video/webcasting. It will evolve. Just the same way usenet is now a fringe that was once the heart, the same way AOL ruled the roost, ditto chat rooms, ditto BBS before them, CB before that.
And along the way, content will find its way into some interesting new forms and bundles. New media concoctions will be all the rage. I hope to be there in some form or another. How about you?
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