Yes! Yes! Yes! (and I’ve cut out my own similar preaching)
Link: BuzzMachine � Blog Archive � Who wants to own content?.
But in this new age, you don’t want to own the content or the pipe that delivers it. You want to participate in what people want to do on their own. You don’t want to extract value. You want to add value. You don’t want to build walls or fences or gardens to keep people from doing what they want to do without you. You want to enable them to do it. You want to join in.
via Roland
One thing: it’s not so much that content has no value, but that the value of content is to spur conversation. When Nokia was about to come out with the N-gage, a friend of mine and I were in the middle of some research into games, music, and books and banging our heads trying to figure a way Nokia could kick butt in these areas. We knew the N-gage was coming and wondered if, instead of just duplicating the current top-down publishing and distribution model of the gaming industry, what would happen if Nokia flipped the ‘normal’ games publishing model and gave the games away free. What we didn’t really figure out was how Nokia would then make money other than device sales.
Now I know – make money from and with the community built around the games. They could have built top-quality games (call it a marketing expense), distribute them to the community, and make money off of community services (or even with the community). We all know that’s not what Nokia ended up doing. Oh, well, nobody asked us for our suggestions. Nonetheless, since then, I’ve advocated giving content away and finding the revenue elsewhere.
