193: Publisher fears are coming to fruition, plus 2 paths forward

Back at the dawn of the internet, publishers were concerned that blogs and other “user generated content” would create too much competition and erode the value of their products. Those fears are materializing in spades. 

Troy Young’s analysis in his Feb. 14th email, "The Next Internet," is very good, and relevant to this point. 

Seek vs. Served.  Troy characterizes the old internet as "seek.” If I wanted to know something, I would enter a query, skim through a list of results, then “go” to some web page. The developing internet, by contrast, is "be served." The content comes to me, e.g., through a chat interface. 

I would like to subdivide the “be served” internet into two models. 

Model #1 involves nameless, faceless, brandless “content” that is slurped up by AI and then regurgitated / served to meet the reader’s needs. It’s not even “the commodification of content” because the AI isn’t paying for it. They just steal it. Everything goes in the database and the chatbot or your personalized AI will decide how to present it to you. The content creator is lost in the process. 

Model #2 has a name and a face. It’s Joe Rogan, Megyn Kelly, Chris Cuomo, and Piers Morgan interpreting the world for you. It’s not “find me the best recipe for French Onion Soup,” or even “what should I cook for dinner tonight,” it’s “what’s Gordon Ramsay eating today?” 

Both models will grow side by side in the coming months, but they both rely on content creators to feed the system. Model #1 filters content with an algorithm. Model #2 filters it through a personality. 

How do the content creators get paid? In Model #1, most of them don’t. Maybe that’s becoming an outdated concept – at least for the majority of content. In Model #2, the original creators might get a shout out, but the talking head can make money through ads, memberships, subscriptions, etc. Joe Rogan is making a killing. 

Publishers like to say that we need experts to create valuable content,
but right now millions of people are uploading content to the internet. Most of it is garbage, some of it is very good, but for the vast majority of content creators there is no reasonable expectation of being paid. They do it because they like it, or they do it the way most people buy a lottery ticket, on the exceedingly unlikely chance they'll hit the number. 
 
What about experts? It’s not clear how much people care whether they’re getting content from an expert. It’s often more a matter of trust in someone because they align with the reader’s preconceptions.

What publishers feared in the early days of the internet – that amateur content (“blogs” in those days) would supplant the need for professional content – is happening on an accelerated basis. And then there’s AI.

How will publishers survive this? I don’t know, but two options come to mind immediately. 

* Become the AI tool. 
* Become the celebrity personality.