BI Revolution

Entropy Is Our Content Marketing Future
Guilluame Decugis has some great insights. I wrote about how disruptive platforms were to "websites" and by extension any other for of information aggregation several years ago (platforms vs. websites http://scenttrail.blogspot.com/2011/09/internet-marketing-platforms-vs.html ).

Now I think platforms are in danger. Platforms aggregate User Generated Content. That aggregation creates a virtual cycle - the bigger it gets the bigger it gets and faster and faster.

Entropy is what will undo even the most stalwart platform. When I wrote How Entropy Is Creating Web 3.0 Right Under Our Noses (http://scenttrail.blogspot.com/2012/11/how-entropy-is-creating-web-30-right.html ) I wanted to share a LESS defined and more TAGGED future.

Look at the Huffington Post. As they push the boundaries of content co-opting more and more writers into their fold they also begin to untangle their own web. As any platform reaches some "point of diminishing returns" point it must begin to eat itself.

Once any website is HUGE becoming that much more dominant doesn't make financial sense. Sure there are virtual cycle rewards. The compound interest of the web is LINKS and the bigger you are the easier links are to accrue.

As any content play becomes HUGE its ability to create a relevant relationship with any new or existing customer is under greater stress. The Huffington Post can keep adding writers but then you are just reading my blog with their masthead (makes no sense and adds no value).

Our old friend entropy says Huffington is about to regress to some lesser mean In fact, I think the creation of mega-platforms as a concept (despite my love for it up until TODAY lol) is over.

Let's call our emerging "lean content" trend rich mobile snippets with gamification. By mashing up what is already out there in the water tomorrow's hubs will curate in multiple dimensions: writers, keyword density and rich tagged snippets. All of this curating will create more free-formed "mesh-like" structures (to quote Lisa Gansky).

What is the difference between a mesh and a platform? Platforms aggregate UGC, curation and content creation to a PLACE. Meshes are less proprietary. Meshes will trap anything from anywhere based on the algorithms used.

Being content agnostic but tag specific is a Google-ization of content, a flexible keyword and behavioral (who cares about what content and why) mesh more responsive, open and flexible than even the most aggressive and currently dominant hub (like the Huffington Post).

The future will be as hard on the Huffington Post as it has been on the New York Times. As an aggregator Huffington may have more pivot capacity than their print cousins, but no one ever expects the Spanish Inquisition :).