In 2005 In The City Interactive asked the delegates ‘Are You Content?’ - the phrase intentionally had a double meaning: is creative output just content and are we happy? Happy that digital technology and convergence have turned the traditional content industries upside down and inside out.
While a number of sectors within the traditional content industry began to reap some real rewards from digital media in 2005 - “Digital music is a reality and it’s becoming a real business” said Tony Wadsworth, UK Chairman and CEO of EMI Music - the last twelve months has seen the development of a significant challenge to ‘expert’ or ‘professionally-produced’ content.
This was the age as Rupert Murdoch put it; where consumers wanted “control over the media, instead of being controlled by it”.
2005 was the year that user-generated content and social networks come to the fore and made some real noise:
Murdoch’s News Corp. showed their intent by buying Intermix Media, owners of social networking site My Space, the fifth most-viewed internet domain in the US, for $580m.
While internet portal giant Yahoo! started the year by buying photo-sharing portal Flickr for an undisclosed sum, then nine months later invested in social bookmark manager Del.icio.us, for a rumoured $30m.
And if 2005 was the year that a great deal of the talk among the digerati was about Web 2.0, then the reality of much of this new digital world is about Content 2.0.
A world that is about user generated content, social networks, content delivery platforms as well as already established forms of personal communication, and the mobility offered up by mobile phones, PDA’s and personal media players that allow us to make content available anytime, anyplace and anywhere. When brought together, all these elements deliver what Marc Canter, co-founder of Macromedia and now CEO of Broadband Mechanics, calls Digital Lifestyle Aggregators or the new powerhouse portals for Web 2.0.
And as Canter has shown with clients such as publisher Ziff-Davis and News Corp have exhibited by their purchase of MySpace, this new world of content is not just the preserve of fast moving internet and technology start-ups; but offers traditional content and media companies, portals, wireless networks and brands alike, a real opportunity to connect with consumers.
And all of these factors have challenged the notion of what is content is - who creates it, how we find it and how we use it. But more importantly it has challenged the whole concept of the value of content!
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If traditionally content had a ‘unique value’, were we just talking about its commercial value?
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And is this world of Web2.0 about delivering a cultural value (be it social or creative) for the consumer and the content creator?
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And is this where the commercial value of content will be derived from in the future?
