If content is king, what are platforms?

“Content is king” was a buzz term a few years ago, not least because Bill Gates had earlier predicted that platform-based businesses would face stiff challenges from basically anyone with a computer. The excitement has somewhat declined as platforms continue to hold sway in the business world.
 Content created individually could not bring about a business success, at least in the old-fashioned economic sense.
The world’s slow affirmation of content is king led to a business model blending platforms and content. TV operators are now also presenting themselves as content providers. Telecom firms keep pushing into the realm of content making rather than merely providing high-definition screens for the innovations of others.
All other IT giants one way or another offer their own news, information or entertainment. Last but not least, even some content providers have sought to have their own platforms.
Everyone has jumped or tried to jump onto the content bandwagon. On the one hand, that has underlined the importance of content. On the other hand, that has snatched the business initiative from the men on the street – the very people that the content is king phenomenon is supposed to empower – back to the status quo.
The Internet and IT revolution as a whole has created opportunities for content providers, but platforms won’t go down without a fight.
In a way, it’s a classic struggle of the status quo. One example of platforms not wanting to lose their omnipresence can be seen in the slow birth of the e-book. Written words are supposed to be the easiest thing to fit in all types of devices or screens, but platforms’ resistance and fierce competition among them guaranteed that while some tablets can configure a book, others may not be able to do so.
We are made to believe that it’s the operating systems that are responsible for content finding it hard to make it to various platforms. That is partly true, but underneath it must be platforms’ reluctance to unify how they operate. The platforms know that content needs them, and rightly or wrongly the platforms have managed to keep their self-importance.
Content is king, but the king is poor, in the old-fashioned business sense at least. Your video can have 20 million views on YouTube, but unless you are very lucky that may not affect you financially.
Who can benefit from your video then? The one who can showcase your video along with countless others of course. You don’t have the capacity to do that. The big guys, or platform owners, do.
As long as money still determines “success”, things are unlikely to change soon. People who talk
about the IT era creating new
business formulas are missing the key point: that money remains the ultimate goal. In essence, while the products may change in shape or form, the motivation remains
the same as it was decades ago.
Everyone wants to be king, but few want to be poor kings. So, at a time when content is easier and quicker to create and of better quality, being a content provider may be as tough as ever.
Let’s see whose gravitational pulls are stronger – content or platforms. It has been a close battle so far, with old-fashioned returns – in other words money – being the leverage of the status quo.
Content, meanwhile, can take heart in the fact that there were
actually times when kings didn’t need to be rich.