The Challenge

Content is the next killer app

Published by Esteban Glas on September 28th, 2007 | This post lacks all category except for: Social Media, Web 2.0, Web Marketing

David Amarno wrote this post entitled “Why Execs Are Stumbling in a New Media World”. Please follow the link and read it (and then come back). For those of you that are a little bit lazy I’ll do the mandatory quote:

Folks, we really need to start understanding what really motivates users. There are literally millions of enthusiasts out there producing quality content in highly search engine friendly formats. Not only is much of their content easier to find on the Web—it’s engaging, relevant, and the people who produce it actually talk back to us. It’s time to wake up. We need to get out in the field and understand people—what motivates them, and why they behave the way they do.

Content. 7 letters. A world full of trouble hidden in just seven letters.

I have been working on a project lately. Got the coders onboard, got the designers engaged, but as I dive deeper and deeper into thinking how it should work, what should it do and all the details that require attention, I have this increasing feeling that it won’t go anyway unless the content is compelling.

And that is a good sign. If I’m smart enough to pay attention, that is.

If you are uncertain that “content is the next killer app” take a look around. Chances are that you are reading this post on some type of feed aggregator. RSS or Atom are forms of XML. XML is a standard to order content; nothing more, nothing less.

Am I trying to state that design is useless? Nope, not at all, if you are making that question you missed my point. Am I saying that applications should only serve to deliver content? That’s more like it.

The point is that design and applications should subordinate to content, that no matter how appealing a design might be it won’t engage people unless there is a strong content backing everything up. People won’t come back because your site is nice and you can drag-and-drop everything around, and you have those nice circular gif-loaders. People will come back if they find the content appealing, useful and interesting.

Now it’s time to send you away for the second time. In case you don’t know him, Rolf Skyberg has the dream job title I want for myself: “Disruptive Innovator”. Ebay gave him this job / title / position. And he blogs. And he exposes in conferences. And he posted 477 slides that will have you attached to the screen for about 20 minutes. So go and read his slides for his presentation at EMERCE e.day and then come back.

The random mandatory quote is:

To build tools, services, and experiences which empower and delight your users and employees not only makes sense, it’s good for business.

The only way to empower and delight is to have appealing content. Period.

A lot of things can make up appealing content. A common misconception when talking about content is that people automatically think “text”. Flickr’s content is pictures. Wait, Flickr’s content is people that post pictures and engage. People create content and people can be content. That is “social”.

Enough of pretty pages with empty punch lines (those that overuse words like leverage, engage, intelligence). Concentrate on building content. Good, old, interesting content that you would read.

(Thanks to David and Rolf for such inspiring posts)

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