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Content Is King (1996)

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Re: Content Is King (1996)

#41

Post by anoncoward111 »

stuartgm wrote: post #37
dredmorbius wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it's only one of multiple myths in this piece. Creators don't need to be paid for their work , but to live . This is a crucial difference. They may be additionally compensated for having created something (or contributing to the creation of something in a collective effort), but it's that stretch between conception and emergence that is most critical, and for which the market, as it stands, has no answer. And can…

So universal basic income?

Not quite. UBI is millions of people subsidizing everyone.

This is more like 300 fanatical content consumers deciding to give a certain person $5 a month so that they spend as much time as possible producing content.

Re: Content Is King (1996)

#42

Post by pouta »

honestoHeminway wrote: post #25
pouta wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is subscription not a good solution? The flow of subscriptions just gets easier and faster for the readers.

Subscription decouples the reward for quality from the consumer. A good system would create payment by time && Lines Read minus some Rewared for Content produced as Result by the User (Not emotional Engagment drivel in some comment, but actually contributing to a discussion). Good Content would be peer reviewed by its readers, like it happens here on HN, and those reviews would in return garant those contributing som…

Wouldn't it be the other way around? The subscription explicitly ties the reward to the quality.

Imagine this: (1) The publisher starts writing quality content in order to gather as much subscribers as possible. (2) Th publisher gets a comfortable amount of subscribers. So it starts to wind down the content quality, thus reducing his costs. (3) Now the users aren't getting the quality they are paying for. (4) Maybe slowly, but surely the subscribers will cancel their subscriptions and ultimately lose their trust in the publication itself. (5) The world is balanced once again.

Now this last point is important, the relationship between the producer and the consumer is based on trust.

Re: Content Is King (1996)

#43

Post by Tomte »

anoncoward111 wrote: post #41
stuartgm wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So universal basic income?

Not quite. UBI is millions of people subsidizing everyone. This is more like 300 fanatical content consumers deciding to give a certain person $5 a month so that they spend as much time as possible producing content.

See also "1000 True Fans": https://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans/

Re: Content Is King (1996)

#44

Post by pouta »

dredmorbius wrote: post #27
bernardlunn wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

22 years later, we still don’t have a good way to pay for content!

Taxws on wealth & income. Information is a public good. https://www.scribd.com/document/370801872/Joseph-Stiglitz-Kn...

The Government should guarantee the creation informative news, or what people usually call "hot news" (a tsunami, who's new president, a new law that changed, anything that is essential to keep the community informed).

It already happens in Portugal for eg. LUSA News Agency is a funded by the Government in order to guarantee exactly what I just described. LUSA is not perfect but it's role should be treated as a public good.

Re: Content Is King (1996)

#45

Post by dredmorbius »

stuartgm wrote: post #37
dredmorbius wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it's only one of multiple myths in this piece. Creators don't need to be paid for their work , but to live . This is a crucial difference. They may be additionally compensated for having created something (or contributing to the creation of something in a collective effort), but it's that stretch between conception and emergence that is most critical, and for which the market, as it stands, has no answer. And can…

So universal basic income?

Quite probably something similar to this, yes.

Re: Content Is King (1996)

#46

Post by dredmorbius »

anoncoward111 wrote: post #41
stuartgm wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So universal basic income?

Not quite. UBI is millions of people subsidizing everyone. This is more like 300 fanatical content consumers deciding to give a certain person $5 a month so that they spend as much time as possible producing content.

Present global ad spend is on the order of $600 billion, distributed very roughly across the 1 billion wealthiest inhabitants of the world, or approximately the inhabitants of wealthy industrial nations. This works out to roughly $100 per person per year, or about $8.33/mo.

Allocating this as a tax would more than replace all present spending on authors, screenwriters, journalists, and musicians.

Re: Content Is King (1996)

#47

Post by dredmorbius »

pouta wrote: post #44
dredmorbius wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taxws on wealth & income. Information is a public good. https://www.scribd.com/document/370801872/Joseph-Stiglitz-Kn...

The Government should guarantee the creation informative news, or what people usually call "hot news" (a tsunami, who's new president, a new law that changed, anything that is essential to keep the community informed). It already happens in Portugal for eg. LUSA News Agency is a funded by the Government in order to guarantee exactly what I just described. LUSA is not perfect but it's role should be treated as a publi…

There's a surprising history here of which most people are almost wholly ignorant. Robert W. McChesney is among the few scholars who've explored this in depth in the US, see for example:

"The Debate Over Public Policy and the Emergence of Commercial Broadcasting in the United States, 1927-1935"

http://www.thebhc.org/sites/default/files/beh/BEHprint/v021/...

When the BBC was formed in the UK, the concept of allowing media ownership to be in the hands of private corporations was considered unthinkable.

Government funding has its own set of considerations, though in balance it seems generally preferable, most especially if funding and control are separated.

Re: Content Is King (1996)

#48

Post by earenndil »

soneil wrote: post #15
bernardlunn wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

22 years later, we still don’t have a good way to pay for content!

I think we do - advertising is still a perfectly legitimate way to pay for 'free' content., plus subscriptions where they make sense. The current problem isn't that we can't or won't pay, or we can't or won't accept advertising. It's that each generation of adtech becomes more and more user-hostile until we're forced to fight back. So the popup became the pop-under, and devolved into popup bombs until browsers were f…

Firefox and safari have done a few relatively small things. Chrome is owned by google, and edge doesn't seem to have done anything.

Re: Content Is King (1996)

#49

Post by rasz »

bernardlunn wrote: post #8
KenanSulayman wrote: post #2

> For the Internet to thrive, content providers must be paid for their work. The long-term prospects are good, but I expect a lot of disappointment in the short-term as content companies struggle to make money through advertising or subscriptions. It isn't working yet, and it may not for some time. And that was back in 1996..

22 years later, we still don’t have a good way to pay for content!

patreon is pretty solid

Re: Content Is King (1996)

#50

Post by Pica_soO »

pouta wrote: post #42
honestoHeminway wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Subscription decouples the reward for quality from the consumer. A good system would create payment by time && Lines Read minus some Rewared for Content produced as Result by the User (Not emotional Engagment drivel in some comment, but actually contributing to a discussion). Good Content would be peer reviewed by its readers, like it happens here on HN, and those reviews would in return garant those contributing som…

Wouldn't it be the other way around? The subscription explicitly ties the reward to the quality. Imagine this: (1) The publisher starts writing quality content in order to gather as much subscribers as possible. (2) Th publisher gets a comfortable amount of subscribers. So it starts to wind down the content quality, thus reducing his costs. (3) Now the users aren't getting the quality they are paying for. (4) Maybe s…

Risk reward is never understood as risk reward by those doing the management. Usually what is instead attempted is a more of the same strategy- if i run a cats & dogs magazine, and i make one article on parrots, which doubles my readers, i do not see this as a signal, that a variety of animals might fly, but instead, will do a bird part of the magazine- repeat more of the same.
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