There’s no shortage of doom-and-gloom talk when it comes to the future of media in a digital world of abundance. The “content-is-free” crowd doesn’t offer a very appealing business model for professional content creators. Andrew Weissman, a venture capitalist at Union Square Ventures, thinks it’s time media companies get back to standing for something. His thinking goes that in a world of so much information and content, media companies can recapture their mojo by having a point of view and a sense of taste.
If we strip out distribution, promotion and marketing as core competencies, the role of the media company might be, quite simply: curated products chosen by a small group of people who just have better taste than everyone else. In other words, users need to rely on someone or something for taste. Which is hugely valuable. And branded tastemakers make perfect sense. Because taste matters. This is also how it used to work in the past.
Read Weissman’s full post on his blog. Follow him on Twitter at @aweissman.
More in Media
Meta AI rolls out several enhancements across apps and websites with its newest Llama 3
Meta AI, which first debuted in September, also got a number of updates including ways to search for real-time information through integrations with Google and Bing.
Walmart rolls out a self-serve, supplier-driven insights connector
The retail giant paired its insights unit Luminate with Walmart Connect to help suppliers optimize for customer consumption, just in time for the holidays, explained the company’s CRO Seth Dallaire.
Research Briefing: BuzzFeed pivots business to AI media and tech as publishers increase use of AI
In this week’s Digiday+ Research Briefing, we examine BuzzFeed’s plans to pivot the business to an AI-driven tech and media company, how marketers’ use of X and ad spending has dropped dramatically, and how agency executives are fed up with Meta’s ad platform bugs and overcharges, as seen in recent data from Digiday+ Research.