Publishers and the Smiling Curve

“Content is king” became a cliche because it was the hallmark of the media business. Without great content, not much else matters. But the platform and scale era scrambled that. Distribution became the gamechanger. Publications had BuzzFeed envy. By the same token, media’s indirect business models -- content in some publishing organizations can be ... See more

I regret that second step: I want to believe that companies that produce truly great content will have negotiating power with Aggregators, because customers will want what they have to sell. And, in very limited cases, that may be true. Anything beyond the very best of the best, though, risks a Wirecutter-type fate: yes, the investment in content p... See more

What followed was probably my first clear articulation of Aggregation Theory, albeit without the name. The point about effectively infinite competition, though, is a critical one. Neither reach nor timeliness were differentiators, but rather commodities; the companies that dominated on the Internet were those — Google and Facebook in particular — t... See more

What’s being concentrated, in other words, is not content but the economic value of content. [The platforms] have realized that they can give away the tools of production but maintain ownership over the resulting products. One of the fundamental economic characteristics of Web 2.0 is the distribution of production into the hands of the many and the... See more

A distribution platform is one that’s core capability is pushing out user-generated work to an audience- this can be anything from TikTok to Substack. The distribution platform gains a crucial view into the creator’s potential core earnings. This is most advantageous in OTT/streaming services because creators historically don’t have deep visibility... See more