Business of Content

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Why content isn't king.

At first blush, I didn't buy into this article title.

You see, I plan to launch a few internet businesses, and “Content is my competitive advantage” is my tagline. I am fortunate to know a lot of things and to grasp things quite well. I love to tinker with ideas, and think about their implications for our life, work and relationships. So, whether it’s writing or speaking about these, content is king for me. At the end of the day, “content aggregators” like Netflix, still need good content to offer their customers, right?

In fact, the dirty little secret of the media industry is that content aggregators, not content creators, have long been the overwhelming source of value creation.

Still, this article is a very good one. There is literally a mass of content out there. We could spend hours and hours wading through the blogs that millions of people write. So it makes perfectly good sense that those companies, like Netflix, that can bring such content together for us are likely to do very well, especially if it’s of interest or value to us.

In the mostly forgotten era of the MCA/Universal chief Lew Wasserman, being a media mogul meant enforcing a culture of informal cooperation, where the bottom line mattered more than one-upping your peers. Wasserman was not literally "the Last Mogul,” as multiple biographers have dubbed him, but he may have been the last one who didn’t think the defining genius of moguldom was out-bidding all the other moguls for the hottest talent, technology, or property of the moment.

How a CEO competes is always a matter of choice, perhaps having to do with style, personality or values. There really is no way for anyone of us to dictate how he or she should compete. Still, Mr. Wasserman offers good lessons on business leadership that CEOs should heed. Our world now is so much more complex and connected than ever before that competition via ‘one-upmanship’ isn’t going to succeed. Instead, finding effective ways to partner, collaborate, and gather others is a critical ingredient of business. This is another reason, I think, why content aggregators in media make very good sense.

Netflix is the rare aggregator that manages the direct customer relationship itself, which allows it both to excel in customer service and to perfect the product by harnessing customer feedback.

I want to engage my customers. I want to captivate them with my stuff. I want to know what they’re thinking about my stuff and about other things, too. Through media and technology, we have such wealth of opportunities now to connect with customers, to learn what they need and what interests them, and to cultivate an active community among them. So my point previously, about how critical collaboration is, most definitely applies with customers as well.

Content creator or content aggregator, where do you weigh in?

Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!

Ron Villejo, PhD