It's All About Content - At Last

I've watched the Internet sprout, grow, flower, and fruit. Now here we are - already! - in what you might almost call a post-technological phase of its growth cycle. Of course, the technology will never disappear as an integral part of what "it" is, but the fact of the technology is sort of ho-hum now.

If you think back (if you can!) to the early days of TV, you may remember (or you may have read) that people would pretty much watch anything just for the sheer novelty of watching something on a screen in their living rooms.

Cable was awesome in its turn because there were so many choices. AND there was a remote "box" (granted, attached to a cord) that could move you through the dozens (ha, now it's thousands) of options.

Surround sound. Pretty cool for a few months. 

HD was a blip. Yeah, ok, gotta go get a new TV or two.

And so it goes with modern technology cycles. They move faster and faster and hold less and less power to demand our attention. 3D movies are amazing, but after 3 or 4 of them, the trick is over and ceases to amaze. We very soon become connoisseurs who can determine whether this movie needed to be made in 3D, or whether the director used it properly.

The Internet has had tremendous demand on it to keep coming up with its next card trick. Remember the phrases DotCom and Killer App? When was that? Just a few years ago? Heck, too many of us remember when there was no Internet, no email, no Social Media (now they're granting degrees in it - huh?), no online shopping carts, no likes, tweets, posts or plus-ones.

Video is expected now - good quality, streaming video. Want to hear a song? There are dozens of ways to find it and play it, ones like it, ones by the same artist, buy it, download it. No waiting! Step right up!
Photo sharing is not just immediate, but I can take a photo of what I'm doing right this very minute and it can be in India in the blink of an eye. And if any of this fails, we kick and scream like a kid who's had the bottle pulled from his mouth.

In other words, we simply expect the technology. We expect it to work. We expect it to amaze us, therefore, we are no longer amazed. It's our birthright.

So what's left?

The one thing that's always been there. It was overshadowed for a long time, but it will, I think, eventually regain its rightful place: content.

In the lifecycle of the Internet, first there was the technology: its infancy. And websites were created by the technocrats, the code guys, the programmers. They worked some magic with bits and bytes that most of us didn't understand, and voila! A web page. It was awesome, but most of us didn't have a clue - nor the patience to learn - how it was done.

But slowly, slowly, the Priests began to give away their secrets, almost as if, like magicians, they couldn't help showing us how the trick was done. Silly showoffs began to make tools that enabled less skilled tricksters to create webpages.

Inevitably, the designers got involved. They wanted the pages to look pretty, to be more organized. They still couldn't code the "back end," the forms and databases and more difficult stuff, but they began to churn out websites that were more glamorous. And, also inevitably, design took over. Still, there was an uneasy detente between designers and programmers, and they created "rules," which soon spawned the "architects," who were more or less the enforcers of these rules. "No more than seven plus or minus 2 menu items on a page." "Always have the logo in the upper left corner." "Always have the search bar in the upper right."

How long would it be before, yes, of course, the marketers moved in on what they couldn't help but see as the next great unexplored territory? Websites went from being fairly simplistic presentations of basic information about a person, place or thing, to pretty, fancy, fun, goofy, artistic presentations of basic information about a person, place or thing, to a way to make money while oh, yeah, also maybe having some information about a person, place or thing. Hidden somewhere, or maybe you have to send us your personal information before we'll give you ours (so we can send you a bunch of marketing emails).

Now, I'm certainly not knocking eCommerce. I think it really is one of the niftiest things since sliced bread. And to an extent, I'm not even knocking Marketing online. When marketers know as much about us as they do, they can often do a good job of offering us stuff that we might "also like." But if you think back, it was only in the mid-90s that computers began to appear in most homes. Now, we're not even 20 years out, and we've already traveled light years away from those early computers and their purpose to the one where we're "data mining," "real time bidding" on a chance to advertise to consumers, and offering real-time discounts on goods or services so that even as we go through our work day, we're in a non-stop mall, flying by us at multi-gigabytes per second.

But it gets wearying, doesn't it? And more and more, I find myself turning to websites that really have something to say. Writers and videographers and photographers who really know their craft, and turn out good, edifying, enlightening material. Who are far beyond and apart from ads and marketing and the attempt to sell - oh, that might be there, too, but it's an "oh, by the way," rather than front and center.

Sure, we have things to sell one another, and yes, we're going to buy when we need to. But as much as its been talked about (and seldom meant) for a couple of years now, Internet marketing is definitely heading toward relationships. We've watched sites like FaceBook and Match.com change our idea of a "relationship." We "friended" people we hadn't thought of in years. And then never thought of them again. We started and ended romances with people we never met. We "liked" or commented on the witty thought of a person we'd met sometime, long ago, at a cocktail party, but wouldn't recognize if they walked in the room (largely because the photo they posted was seven years out of date!).

But eventually, it all became too much. Or perhaps I should say "it is becoming," as that's where I think we are now. We're starting to winnow it all out. Shake off the stuff we're not really interested in. Stop watching every viral video that gets passed around, knowing that we can rely on certain individuals to share stuff worth our while, and not waste our time with the rest. Know which websites offer real value, either for purchasing or learning. Recognize the difference between something flashy and something really valuable.

We're looking for content.

It's about time.