Content
is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the Internet, just as
it was in broadcasting. The television revolution that began half a century
ago spawned a number of industries, including the manufacturing of TV sets, but
the long-term winners were those who used the medium to deliver information and
entertainment. When it comes to an interactive network such as the Internet,
the definition of "content" becomes very wide. For example, computer software
is a form of content-an extremely important one, and the one that for Microsoft
will remain by far the most important. But the broad opportunities for
most companies involve supplying information or entertainment. No company is too
small to participate. One of the exciting things about the Internet is
that anyone with a PC and a modem can publish whatever content they can create.
In a sense, the Internet is the multimedia equivalent of the photocopier. It allows
material to be duplicated at low cost, no matter the size of the audience.
The Internet also allows information to be distributed worldwide at basically
zero marginal cost to the publisher. Opportunities are remarkable, and many companies
are laying plans to create content for the Internet. For example, the television
network NBC and Microsoft recently agreed to enter the interactive news business
together. Our companies will jointly own a cable news network, MSNBC, and an interactive
news service on the Internet. NBC will maintain editorial control over the joint
venture. I expect societies will see intense competition-and ample failure
as well as success-in all categories of popular content-not just software and
news, but also games, entertainment, sports programming, directories, classified
advertising, and on-line communities devoted to major interests. Printed
magazines have readerships that share common interests. It's easy to imagine these
communities being served by electronic online editions. But to be successful
online, a magazine can't just take what it has in print and move it to the electronic
realm. There isn't enough depth or interactivity in print content to overcome
the drawbacks of the online medium. If people are to be expected to put
up with turning on a computer to read a screen, they must be rewarded with deep
and extremely up-to-date information that they can explore at will. They need
to have audio, and possibly video. They need an opportunity for personal involvement
that goes far beyond that offered through the letters-to-the-editor pages of print
magazines. A question on many minds is how often the same company that
serves an interest group in print will succeed in serving it online. Even the
very future of certain printed magazines is called into question by the Internet.
For example, the Internet is already revolutionizing the exchange of specialized
scientific information. Printed scientific journals tend to have small circulations,
making them high-priced. University libraries are a big part of the market. It's
been an awkward, slow, expensive way to distribute information to a specialized
audience, but there hasn't been an alternative. Now some researchers are
beginning to use the Internet to publish scientific findings. The practice challenges
the future of some venerable printed journals. Over time, the breadth of
information on the Internet will be enormous, which will make it compelling. Although
the gold rush atmosphere today is primarily confined to the United States, I expect
it to sweep the world as communications costs come down and a critical mass of
localized content becomes available in different countries. For the Internet
to thrive, content providers must be paid for their work. The long-term prospects
are good, but I expect a lot of disappointment in the short-term as content companies
struggle to make money through advertising or subscriptions. It isn't working
yet, and it may not for some time. So far, at least, most of the money
and effort put into interactive publishing is little more than a labor of love,
or an effort to help promote products sold in the non-electronic world. Often
these efforts are based on the belief that over time someone will figure out how
to get revenue. In the long run, advertising is promising. An advantage
of interactive advertising is that an initial message needs only to attract attention
rather than convey much information. A user can click on the ad to get additional
information-and an advertiser can measure whether people are doing so.
But today the amount of subscription revenue or advertising revenue realized on
the Internet is near zero-maybe $20 million or $30 million in total. Advertisers
are always a little reluctant about a new medium, and the Internet is certainly
new and different. Some reluctance on the part of advertisers may be justified,
because many Internet users are less-than-thrilled about seeing advertising. One
reason is that many advertisers use big images that take a long time to download
across a telephone dial-up connection. A magazine ad takes up space too, but a
reader can flip a printed page rapidly. As connections to the Internet
get faster, the annoyance of waiting for an advertisement to load will diminish
and then disappear. But that's a few years off. Some content companies
are experimenting with subscriptions, often with the lure of some free content.
It's tricky, though, because as soon as an electronic community charges a subscription,
the number of people who visit the site drops dramatically, reducing the value
proposition to advertisers. A major reason paying for content doesn't
work very well yet is that it's not practical to charge small amounts. The cost
and hassle of electronic transactions makes it impractical to charge less than
a fairly high subscription rate. But within a year the mechanisms will
be in place that allow content providers to charge just a cent or a few cents
for information. If you decide to visit a page that costs a nickel, you won't
be writing a check or getting a bill in the mail for a nickel. You'll just click
on what you want, knowing you'll be charged a nickel on an aggregated basis.
This technology will liberate publishers to charge small amounts of money, in
the hope of attracting wide audiences. Those who succeed will propel the
Internet forward as a marketplace of ideas, experiences, and products-a marketplace
of content. ©
2001 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
I
have placed this article here solely because it has been removed from the Microsoft
list of Published
Writing – Essays by Bill Gates, and I believe it is much too important
to be buried in the Wayback
Machine - which is not searchable by Google. Sorry, and all that, but there
ya go ~ Andrew Heenan 23 June 2007 | 
|