Musing about my ramblings on 'content' I've come up with a much simpler way of putting what I've been struggling to say: Content is a business-to-business construct. It is useful for making deals in the media industry, for syndicating, and for building compelling destinations. But it is not a useful business-to-consumer proposition.
To see what I mean, just think of the way that some cable and IPTV video-on-demand products are designed. They assume a user who thinks like a media executive in search of content, and strive to help him by making his 'search' as painless and brief as possible. Of course this fits some user needs (e.g. if I want to watch a particular movie), but not others (e.g. if I want to see a list of the day's news and then choose a report to watch, or if I just want to watch some telly at the end of a long day).
Consumers need more wholistic products that enable experiences that belong to practices; content is essential to these experiences, but it is far from being the full story.
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