The Mobile Content Mess
While carriers believe that they'll always be able to profit directly off of content sales, some are noticing that there's an awful lot of wheeling and dealing in the space as companies are buying each other, changing their offerings, or trying to jump into new lines of business. All this really means is that the mobile content market is very much up in the air, and no one is quite sure where or how the money will be made - so the strategy right now is to throw as much stuff on the wall as possible and see what sticks. Of course, we go back to previous statements in this area: you can't compete on content that has no differentiated value. Companies that want to make money on "content" need, instead, to look at making money on "services" - which means the regular and timely delivery of that content and the ability to let the user add value to it. Content, by it's very nature, tends towards free - because it's easy to share and move on. The value is in getting specific content in the right place and at the right time. Companies that focus on providing that piece will do much better than those that think people will pay for plain old "content".
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
