CONTENT IS KING – BILL GATES (1/3/1996)
Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the Internet, just as it was in broadcasting.
The television revolution that began half a century ago spawned a number of industries, including the manufacturing of TV sets, but the long-term winners were those who used the medium to deliver information and entertainment.
When it comes to an interactive network such as the Internet, the definition of “content” becomes very wide. For example, computer software is a form of content-an extremely important one, and the one that for Microsoft will remain by far the most important.
But the broad opportunities for most companies involve supplying information or entertainment. No company is too small to participate.
One of the exciting things about the Internet is that anyone with a PC and a modem can publish whatever content they can create. In a sense, the Internet is the multimedia equivalent of the photocopier. It allows material to be duplicated at low cost, no matter the size of the audience.
The Internet also allows information to be distributed worldwide at basically zero marginal cost to the publisher. Opportunities are remarkable, and many companies are laying plans to create content for the Internet.
For example, the television network NBC and Microsoft recently agreed to enter the interactive news business together. Our companies will jointly own a cable news network, MSNBC, and an interactive news service on the Internet. NBC will maintain editorial control over the joint venture.
I expect societies will see intense competition-and ample failure as well as success-in all categories of popular content-not just software and news, but also games, entertainment, sports programming, directories, classified advertising, and on-line communities devoted to major interests.
Printed magazines have readerships that share common interests. It’s easy to imagine these communities being served by electronic online editions.
But to be successful online, a magazine can’t just take what it has in print and move it to the electronic realm. There isn’t enough depth or interactivity in print content to overcome the drawbacks of the online medium.
If people are to be expected to put up with turning on a computer to read a screen, they must be rewarded with deep and extremely up-to-date information that they can explore at will. They need to have audio, and possibly video. They need an opportunity for personal involvement that goes far beyond that offered through the letters-to-the-editor pages of print magazines.
A question on many minds is how often the same company that serves an interest group in print will succeed in serving it online. Even the very future of certain printed magazines is called into question by the Internet.
For example, the Internet is already revolutionizing the exchange of specialized scientific information. Printed scientific journals tend to have small circulations, making them high-priced. University libraries are a big part of the market. It’s been an awkward, slow, expensive way to distribute information to a specialized audience, but there hasn’t been an alternative.
Now some researchers are beginning to use the Internet to publish scientific findings. The practice challenges the future of some venerable printed journals.
Over time, the breadth of information on the Internet will be enormous, which will make it compelling. Although the gold rush atmosphere today is primarily confined to the United States, I expect it to sweep the world as communications costs come down and a critical mass of localized content becomes available in different countries.
For the Internet to thrive, content providers must be paid for their work. The long-term prospects are good, but I expect a lot of disappointment in the short-term as content companies struggle to make money through advertising or subscriptions. It isn’t working yet, and it may not for some time.
So far, at least, most of the money and effort put into interactive publishing is little more than a labor of love, or an effort to help promote products sold in the non-electronic world. Often these efforts are based on the belief that over time someone will figure out how to get revenue.
In the long run, advertising is promising. An advantage of interactive advertising is that an initial message needs only to attract attention rather than convey much information. A user can click on the ad to get additional information-and an advertiser can measure whether people are doing so.
But today the amount of subscription revenue or advertising revenue realized on the Internet is near zero-maybe $20 million or $30 million in total. Advertisers are always a little reluctant about a new medium, and the Internet is certainly new and different.
Some reluctance on the part of advertisers may be justified, because many Internet users are less-than-thrilled about seeing advertising. One reason is that many advertisers use big images that take a long time to download across a telephone dial-up connection. A magazine ad takes up space too, but a reader can flip a printed page rapidly.
As connections to the Internet get faster, the annoyance of waiting for an advertisement to load will diminish and then disappear. But that’s a few years off.
Some content companies are experimenting with subscriptions, often with the lure of some free content. It’s tricky, though, because as soon as an electronic community charges a subscription, the number of people who visit the site drops dramatically, reducing the value proposition to advertisers.
A major reason paying for content doesn’t work very well yet is that it’s not practical to charge small amounts. The cost and hassle of electronic transactions makes it impractical to charge less than a fairly high subscription rate.
But within a year the mechanisms will be in place that allow content providers to charge just a cent or a few cents for information. If you decide to visit a page that costs a nickel, you won’t be writing a check or getting a bill in the mail for a nickel. You’ll just click on what you want, knowing you’ll be charged a nickel on an aggregated basis.
This technology will liberate publishers to charge small amounts of money, in the hope of attracting wide audiences.
Those who succeed will propel the Internet forward as a marketplace of ideas, experiences, and products-a marketplace of content.
This essay is copyright © 2001 Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
以下中文版本由谷歌翻译
内容为王 - 比尔盖茨（1/3/1996）
内容是我期望在互联网上赚取大部分真钱的地方，就像在广播中一样。
半个世纪前开始的电视革命催生了许多行业，包括制造电视机，但长期的赢家是使用媒体提供信息和娱乐的人。
当谈到诸如因特网的交互式网络时，“内容”的定义变得非常广泛。例如，计算机软件是一种内容形式 - 一种非常重要的内容，而对于微软来说，它仍然是最重要的内容。
但大多数公司的广泛机会涉及提供信息或娱乐。没有公司太小，无法参与。
关于互联网的一个令人兴奋的事情是，拥有PC和调制解调器的任何人都可以发布他们可以创建的任何内容。从某种意义上说，互联网就是影印机的多媒体。它允许以低成本复制材料，无论观众的规模如何。
互联网还允许以低于边际成本的方式向全世界分发信息给出版商。机会非凡，许多公司正在制定计划，为互联网创建内容。
例如，电视网NBC和微软最近同意一起进入互动新闻业务。我们公司将在互联网上共同拥有有线新闻网络，MSNBC和互动新闻服务。 NBC将保持对合资企业的编辑控制权。
我希望社会将在所有类别的流行内容中看到激烈的竞争 - 充分的失败和成功 - 不仅仅是软件和新闻，还包括游戏，娱乐，体育节目，目录，分类广告以及致力于主要利益。
印刷杂志的读者群具有共同的兴趣。很容易想象这些社区是由电子在线版本提供服务的。
但要想在网上获得成功，一本杂志不仅可以将其印刷品中的内容转移到电子领域。在打印内容中没有足够的深度或交互性来克服在线介质的缺点。
如果人们期望忍受打开电脑阅读屏幕，他们必须获得他们可以随意探索的深度和最新信息。他们需要有音频，可能还有视频。他们需要一个个人参与的机会，这远远超出了通过印刷杂志的编辑页面提供的机会。
许多人心中的一个问题是，为印刷中的利益集团服务的同一家公司是否会成功在线提供服务。即使是某些印刷杂志的未来也会受到互联网的质疑。
例如，互联网已经在彻底改变专业科学信息的交流。印刷的科学期刊往往流通量较小，价格较高。大学图书馆是市场的重要组成部分。将信息分发给专业受众是一种尴尬，缓慢，昂贵的方式，但还没有其他选择。
现在一些研究人员开始利用互联网发表科学发现。这种做法挑战了一些古老的印刷期刊的未来。
随着时间的推移，互联网上的信息范围将是巨大的，这将使其引人注目。虽然今天的淘金热气氛主要局限于美国，但我预计随着通信成本下降以及不同国家可获得大量本地化内容，它将席卷全球。
为了使互联网蓬勃发展，必须为内容提供商的工作付费。长期前景良好，但由于内容公司难以通过广告或订阅赚钱，我预计短期会有很多失望。它还没有工作，也可能不会持续一段时间。
到目前为止，至少，用于互动出版的大部分资金和努力只不过是一种爱的劳动，或者是一种帮助推广在非电子世界中销售的产品的努力。这些努力通常基于这样一种信念，即随着时间的推移，有人会想出如何获得收入。
从长远来看，广告很有前景。交互式广告的一个优点是初始消息只需要吸引注意力而不是传达大量信息。用户可以点击广告以获取其他信息 - 广告客户可以衡量人们是否这样做。
但今天，互联网上实现的订阅收入或广告收入接近于零 - 可能是2000万美元或3000万美元。广告商总是对新媒体不太感兴趣，互联网肯定是新的和不同的。
广告商的一些不情愿可能是合理的，因为许多互联网用户对看到广告并不那么兴奋。一个原因是许多广告商使用需要很长时间才能通过电话拨号连接下载的大图像。杂志广告也会占用空间，但读者可以快速翻转打印页面。
随着与互联网的连接变得更快，等待广告加载的烦恼将减少然后消失。但这还需要几年时间。
一些内容公司正在尝试订阅，通常会有一些免费内容的诱惑。但这很棘手，因为一旦电子社区收取订阅费用，访问该网站的人数就会大幅下降，从而降低了对广告商的价值主张。
支付内容费用的一个主要原因是，收取少量费用是不切实际的。电子交易的成本和麻烦使得收取低于相当高的订阅率是不切实际的。
但在一年内，将建立机制，允许内容提供商只收取一美分或几美分的信息。如果您决定访问费用为镍的页面，您将不会在支票上写一张支票或收到镍的账单。你只需点击你想要的东西，就会知道你会在汇总的基础上收取镍。
这项技术将解放出版商收取少量资金，以期吸引广大受众。
那些成功的人将推动互联网作为一个思想，经验和产品市场 - 一个内容市场。
本文版权归©2001 Microsoft Corporation所有。版权所有。
转载自：
https://www.craigbailey.net/content-is-king-by-bill-gates/
原文地址：https://www.cnblogs.com/poterliu/p/10263064.html