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December 4, 2007
Alan Meckler: A "Golden Age" for Internet Content/Acquisitions
Some wildly bullish musing on content and the likelihood of related acquisitions from the very financially savvy Alan Meckler of Mecklermedia.
The Internet has finally achieved what I had predicted in the mid-1990s: that the Internet would spawn an enormous wave of vertical content sites way beyond what print was ever able to accomplish. Internet publisning is an economic wonder. Regardless of the number of readers, costs do not increase very much. With print, a publisher faces the economics of paper, printing, binding and postage. The Internet publisher has little to no incremental cost as readership increases. And now that the Internet is becoming part of every home and business worldwide the opportunities are greater and greater for vertical content sites to thrive (for both the consumer and the BtoB market).
The golden age of Internet acquisitions is upon us. Large media companies will be gorging on existing and promising content sites for years to come.
If I had time, I think I would work as a media banker buying and selling Web sites.
To 'fess up, I'm a big believer in this thesis. The level of content speciation being unleashed right now is unprecedented, with rapidly-declining barriers to entry letting anyone find their audience around the world. Talent trumps all in this flattening world, and while distribution matters, it isn't required for success.
[Mecklermedia via Blogcosm]
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For the ordinary startup:
The incremental costs of a new reader may be low.
The incremental costs of retaining your new reader are, on the other hand, high.
Attentions wander more on the internet than in print: when they wander too far, they have left your site.
"little to no incremental cost"? hardly. Tell that to people trying to scale their Facebook apps when the viral wave hits.
The incremental costs are smaller than in print, but they're there. And the incremental costs are greater than with broadcast.
The big advantage of the Internet is that the startup costs are much smaller. If you have a great idea and a niche, you can get started with a free WordPress.com blog.