Jakob Nielsen agrees with me (see my earlier blog "Content is key" and then some when he says...
"Web users have always been ruthless and now are even more so. People want sites to get to the point, they have very little patience," he said. (Full story)
The web is about providing people with what they want.
The big boys know that the Internet is all about content, so they are putting it online by the truckload. There may be a philanthropic angle to this, but in today's world businesses (even the BBC) rarely do anything without expectation of a return.
So what's been happening:
Google Booksearch - Google's reputed aim is to make all printed content available online in a fully searchable format. This huge resource is a great research tool.
Times Archive - The Times is launching a free online archive of its newspapers spanning 200 years, which will reproduce stories exactly as they originally appeared in print.
BBC One simulcast - The BBC has unveiled plans to air its flagship channel BBC One live on the internet, making it the first of the corporation's analogue TV channels to be simulcast on the web (full story).
This activity harks back to the halycon days of the Internet before monetisation. Naive perhaps, but the "build it and they will come" mentality is back with avengence. And I would suggest that, rather than an ill-considered venture, this is the vanguard of a content driven new order.
Developments in technology make publishing online a far cheaper activity and the lessons of the last decade suggest that these publishing giants have a clear idea of how they will generate value from this activity. As in those halycon days, it will all be about generating traffic for advertising sales and lists of registered users. The difference will be that these sites will generate huge levels of traffic and the valuations are based on a more mature model.
Google, after all, has always taken this approach to its development and is the largest Internet brand in the World with a market valuation to match.
