Silicon Valley’s Content Colonization is Well Underway

In the early stages of Facebook and the birth of Instagram, there was a shift within the tech world from original content generation to platforming. This meant a redirection in focus from producing a digital product towards strictly focusing on the platform in which content is exchanged and shared. Following in the steps of Napster, PayPal, Facebook and the likes, every aspiring start-up wanted to be a platform for content aggregation or content exchange, but not content creation. Due to the profitability of platform and exchange sites at the time, tech entrepreneurs and venture capitalists alike agreed that those business models were the future, with the users creating the content. Many hastily predicted the deaths of newspapers and production companies, forecasting user-generated content as the future.

          They were both right and wrong. They were right in the sense that it caused many papers to close down after losing subscribers. They were wrong because while those smaller entities died, the rise of social media accelerated the growth of blogs (which in many ways replaced the papers) and made the larger papers (such as the New York Times and The Washington Post) have even a larger global reach. They were also right in the sense that many personal editors such as Pro Tools and Final Cut Pro made it easier than ever for amateur musicians and directors to bust onto their respective scenes. Yet they didn’t understand that an increase in the creation of data and information would also call for an increase in the quality of this said data. 

         On the heels of the fake news epidemic, Silicon Valley has become more aware with each passing day of the need for focusing in on quality content. The result has been many major Silicon Valley power players from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to Steve Jobs’ widow Laurene Powell, buying content-generation outlets. 

         After conquering the aspect of having an effective platform, Jeff Bezos’ Amazon is focusing on the other side by becoming one of the largest content creators/aggregators on the web. Imitating the Netflix and HBO GO models, Bezos is seeking to make Amazon’s streaming service a behemoth by having the biggest shows available. Roy Price, the head of Amazon Studios stated to Variety “I do think ‘Game of Thrones’ is to TV as ‘Jaws’ and ‘Star Wars’ was to the movies of the 1970s.” This is a clear reverberation of Bezos’ vision for Amazon studios to create the next sensation in streaming. Bezos’ also has made a concerted effort in the past years to expand his reach into news organizations as well. Bezos purchased the Washington Post in 2013 for $250 million. The paper which is often quite critical of the current administration is sometimes referred to by Donald Trump as the “Amazon Washington Post.” 

        There are several other tech giants that are entering the news space besides Bezos. Chris Hughes, the co-founder of Facebook bought The New Republic in 2012. Hughes described his reasoning behind his purchase of the publication by stating “[I] underestimated the difficulty of transitioning an old and traditional institution into a digital media company in today’s quickly evolving climate.” In addition to Hughes owning the New Republic, Lauren Powell Jobs (the widow of the late Steve Jobs) now owns the majority stake in The Atlantic. 

        To bring this full circle, Facebook is also planning on bringing its own lineup of new original news content. This is coming off Zuckerberg facing stark criticism for the role that Facebook played in Trump’s rise to power. According to the New York Times, Facebook accepted $100,000 worth of ads from a Kremlin-connected Russian Firm which according to the paper were designed to “damage Hillary Clinton and boost Donald J. Trump during the election.” Of course, to put this into perspective- Hillary Clinton’s Campaign cost $1.4 billion and Donald Trump’s cost $957.6 million, so a $100,000 campaign is a relative flash in the pan. However, even though this may be the media using Facebook as another tie between Trump and Russia, it still is damaging to Facebook PR. Thus, with their own news content, Facebook will effectively have more control over the curation of each individual user’s feed then it had in the past. 

           In an article published this past May, The Economist made a bold claim that “The world’s most valuable resource is no longer oil, but data.” Taking their word for it, we can describe the manufacturing and consumption of data as Silicon Valley’s main goal. Tech firms have come to realize that for complete dominance in this field, it’s important to not just facilitate the user, but to also be the fundamental source in which the data comes from. It allows companies such as Facebook and Amazon to capitalize on every aspect of the data ‘food chain’, in which they can create, facilitate and promote through their own media outlets simultaneously. Content is King, and the final step to many of these companies’ dominance of the mass market.