Aggregating vs creating

I’ve never bought into the content is king mantra. Not as the online dept head for a Gannett newspaper, not as a blogger*, and definitely not as a web developer. It’s like third or forth on my as-yet-unwritten list of how to build an engaging web thing.

It’s not that I think content is trivial or secondary. But considering the internets are jammed full of the stuff, I’m more interested in the discovery of relevant content than I am in the production of original content.

Apparently, I’m not the only one.

I’m catching up on 30 (pulp) inquiries sent over the last 24 hours, about half of which are interested in projects leveraging community publishing / crowd sourcing / wisdom of crowds. The number of incoming leads spiked a bit based on a small cameo pulp landed in the wall street journal for some work on another crowdsourcing project (truemors,) but the interest has been strong for a few months now. There seems to be a shift towards content discovery vs content creation.

On one hand, I like it. I’d love to be talking about the attention economy, working on relevancy / authority solutions, releasing discovery engines into the wild. Who needs original content when you can aggregate/syndicate the existing stuff or even ask your community to create it for you? Right?

On the other hand, I have to wonder what a recognizable shift in the [perceived] value of original content creation would look like. If you follow the Web 3.0 forecast, you’ll notice a heavy focus on content divining and an absolute void regarding content creation. It doesn’t look like the cool kids are inviting the content creators to the 3.0 party.

I’m guessing there are a few content producers that would fight the suggestion that the internets are already saturated with content. I’d even back them up if I wasn’t busy being contradictory. But I’d still argue there are more engaging factors when it comes to grabbing/holding the attention of an online community than your ability to produce original content.

Just look at the simultaneous slide of the entire newspaper industry and the rise of the aggregators. I can’t make this stuff up.

*Yes, that’s right, I used an asterisk. Indirectly suggesting that content isn’t the most important aspect of a blog seemed to warrant one. My point is that I could aggregate more compelling content than I could create on my own and then focus on usability and distribution. Ta da.