Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Putting a course on content together (3)

Yesterday I treated in short the changes in the chain of value chain. Content creation and packaging being dependent on each other as well technology platforms and distribution, while consumers are no longer the receivers of information, but participants in information.

This overall change in the value chain requires new specialities in every chain:

Content creation. In this chain the storytelling has changed essentially. Digital storytelling is not just putting a story together between a beginning and an end. Digital storytelling requires a feeling for interactive actions and use of multimedia in a story. Over the past years, I have been impressed for example by the interactive monument of the Madrid bombings, produced by El Pais. Completely different is the storytelling in the Goatmilk Festivals in Romania. Another approach is the virtual puppeteering.

Packaging. Packaging has become a completely different game. It is all about concepting, formats and business models. So there is a creative component, a process component, a legal component and a commercial component. Digital content packagers need three qualities: creative; process; marketing/commercial.

With the content creation and packaging also a new subject comes along: content sustainability. Content sustainability means different things to different media: to newspapers and magazines it means how perishable is an item; to books it means how long lasts the interest. To e-media it means the creation of own content, the life cycle of it and the availability from a third party. Content becomes a strategic online item which has a life cycle.

Technology platforms. Technology platforms require also a variety of specialisations, which can be put together as content-related technologies: content management systems, digital rights management systems and micro-payment systems.

Distribution. There are now various channels to distribute content ranging from DVDs to internet, interactive television and mobile. In crossmedia they can be combined with traditional media such as print, radio and TV.

Consumers. Since the rise of print, consumers only received newspapers, magazines or books and could not immediately react to the publisher. In the digital content chain the consumer can directly react to questions, polls from the programme producer by for example SMS. It is one of the special possibilities offered by digital media. In crossmedia these digital contact possibilities are used to stay in touch with users, allowing them to follow a story differently, feeling more engaged by having more ways to understand the story and participate in it. In fact these possibilities make users consume more. It increases, strengthens, and deepens the relationship with the end user.

Content specialists should know about all these five chains, but mainly about content creation and packaging. They should of course understand the technological opportunities, but they only have to translate them to formats and distribution channels.

Tags: content

Blog Posting Number: 553

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