Anyone who finds this interesting should track down a copy of The Road Ahead (http://www.amazon.com/Road-Ahead-Bill-Gates/dp/9573231670/), the book Gates published at around the same time as this appeared. It's an interesting look at his thinking just when he was beginning to realize (very nearly too late!) that the Internet was going to be a Very Big Deal.
Content Is King (1996)
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Re: Content Is King (1996)
#12This is incredibly clairvoyant. Gates accurately predicted the success that content megaliths would see (I was thinking about Netflix, online news, personal blogs), but he didn't exactly predict the huge content landslide we face today and what it has created. For example, he basically urged corporations to create a bunch of content, while some of the most successful sites on the internet today simply exist to filter and aggregate content and to separate the signal from the noise (like Google).
Overall he's still right--content is king. But I predict that in the future the internet is going to be dominated by user generated content and websites that can effectively show us what we want to see--websites that can refine the ever-growing amounts of information we have at our fingertips.
Re: Content Is King (1996)
#13As connections to the Internet get faster, the annoyance of waiting for an advertisement to load will diminish and then disappear. But that's a few years off.
Still is. And will always be.
The annoyance of ads will always expand to fill any improvements in throughput achieved by technology.
Re: Content Is King (1996)
#14Anyone who finds this interesting should track down a copy of The Road Ahead ( http://www.amazon.com/Road-Ahead-Bill-Gates/dp/9573231670/ ), the book Gates published at around the same time as this appeared. It's an interesting look at his thinking just when he was beginning to realize (very nearly too late!) that the Internet was going to be a Very Big Deal.
I soaked that book up as a 15 year old when it was released. I remember proudly writing a report on it.
In retrospect, The Road Ahead probably had a more profound effect on me than I realized at the time. There's a great quote from the book which sums up why I took hold to computers and software more than many of the other creative and engineering related endeavors I had at the time:
"Computers are great because when you're working with them you get immediate results that let you know if your program works. It's feedback you don't get from many other things."
Re: Content Is King (1996)
#15As connections to the Internet get faster, the annoyance of waiting for an advertisement to load will diminish and then disappear. But that's a few years off. Still is. And will always be. The annoyance of ads will always expand to fill any improvements in throughput achieved by technology.
If only someone invented a way to block ads from loading :)
Seriously though, why did it take so long for adblocker to be invented?
Re: Content Is King (1996)
#16It's fascinating to me that Gates correctly described the content we would see and the problems in monetizing it, but was totally off base in predicting we would have any of it fixed by now. Content is king, and sites with content richer than plaintext have done substantially better. Advertising has done well, and long-term subscription models continue to drive down user counts. The line about "attract attention, not…
This is how most predictions play out. It's not so hard to see where things are going, but near impossible to predict how they will manifest themselves.
Re: Content Is King (1996)
#17[deleted]
Re: Content Is King (1996)
#18Anyone who finds this interesting should track down a copy of The Road Ahead ( http://www.amazon.com/Road-Ahead-Bill-Gates/dp/9573231670/ ), the book Gates published at around the same time as this appeared. It's an interesting look at his thinking just when he was beginning to realize (very nearly too late!) that the Internet was going to be a Very Big Deal.
I soaked that book up as a 15 year old when it was released. I remember proudly writing a report on it. In retrospect, The Road Ahead probably had a more profound effect on me than I realized at the time. There's a great quote from the book which sums up why I took hold to computers and software more than many of the other creative and engineering related endeavors I had at the time: "Computers are great because when…
> "Computers are great because when you're working with them you get immediate results that let you know if your program works. It's feedback you don't get from many other things."
No, you get that feedback from playing music and singing.
Re: Content Is King (1996)
#19For video, meaning shows and movies, content is king. For music and writing, distribution is king.
Why is distribution king? What is special about music and writing that makes it so that people wont seek out quality content?
Re: Content Is King (1996)
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
I soaked that book up as a 15 year old when it was released. I remember proudly writing a report on it. In retrospect, The Road Ahead probably had a more profound effect on me than I realized at the time. There's a great quote from the book which sums up why I took hold to computers and software more than many of the other creative and engineering related endeavors I had at the time: "Computers are great because when…
> "Computers are great because when you're working with them you get immediate results that let you know if your program works. It's feedback you don't get from many other things." No, you get that feedback from playing music and singing.
I played music badly for years, never noticed it.