In an age of rapid digital disruption, how can you retain market power and continue to prosper online?
There is a lot of misinformation and confusion about how to compete in the digital landscape, and one of the points of confusion is about the power and value of content.
There is a new company called The Grid, which you may have seen advertised on Facebook, which is planning to sell AI websites that design themselves. The company’s tagline is “content is power, power your content on The Grid.”
The company argues that if we each had our own unique personal corner of the web, then the Internet would be a better place. This is a compelling sales pitch but it also conveniently ignores the way that market dynamics work online.
As I highlighted yesterday, the Internet creates winner take all dynamics whereby companies that can establish brand recognition, sufficient scale and strong network effects will often be able to dominate their market segment online.
Consider also the fact that companies like Narrative Science have managed to produced natural language algorithms that can create high quality pieces of writing. This technology has the potential to put most journalists out of work and, perhaps a little bit further down the line, lawyers and technical writers too.
Content is not power, but if it can be used to connect with people and bring them together in a scaleable way then that would be powerful indeed.