The New Media: Consolidation of Content Creation & Attention
Oct 17th, 2007 by Dan Blank
Scott Karp looks at two media consolidation trends:
- The consolidation of content creation.
- The consolidating the power to decide which content gets attention.
His examples of content consolidation are particularly interesting:
- Buying and selling links to influence search traffic — a practice Google is cracking down on to protect its own consolidation
- “Citizen media” sites like the NowPublic, AssociatedContent, and the recently acquired Newsvine, which consolidate independent content creation activity
- New York Times bringing the Freakonomics blog onto its domain and cranking out new blogs (over 40 now) in order to crank out more and more content at a fraction of the cost of its traditional print content operation
- Vertical ad networks that comprise mostly niche sites you’ve never heard of but that get tons of traffic from search
- Traffic networks — a larger strategy that encompasses ad networks, blog networks, affiliate networks (e.g. Glam, Reuters’ new Affiliate Network) — networks like CNN’s partnership with Internet Broadcasting’s local TV sites, which created the largest news “site” after Yahoo News