內容為王 - 比爾蓋茨 content is king – Bill Gates (1/3/1996)
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譯
內容為王 - 比爾蓋茨（1/3/1996）
內容是我期望在互聯網上賺取大部分真錢的地方，就像在廣播中一樣。半個世紀前開始的電視革命催生了許多行業，包括制造電視機，但長期的贏家是使用媒體提供信息和娛樂的人。
當談到諸如因特網的交互式網絡時，“內容”的定義變得非常廣泛。例如，計算機軟件是一種內容形式 - 一種非常重要的內容，而對於微軟來說，它仍然是最重要的內容。
但大多數公司的廣泛機會涉及提供信息或娛樂。沒有公司太小，無法參與。
關於互聯網的一個令人興奮的事情是，擁有PC和調制解調器的任何人都可以發布他們可以創建的任何內容。從某種意義上說，互聯網就是影印機的多媒體。它允許以低成本復制材料，無論觀眾的規模如何。
互聯網還允許以低於邊際成本的方式向全世界分發信息給出版商。機會非凡，許多公司正在制定計劃，為互聯網創建內容。
例如，電視網NBC和微軟最近同意一起進入互動新聞業務。我們公司將在互聯網上共同擁有有線新聞網絡，MSNBC和互動新聞服務。 NBC將保持對合資企業的編輯控制權。
我希望社會將在所有類別的流行內容中看到激烈的競爭 - 充分的失敗和成功 - 不僅僅是軟件和新聞，還包括遊戲，娛樂，體育節目，目錄，分類廣告以及致力於主要利益。
印刷雜誌的讀者群具有共同的興趣。很容易想象這些社區是由電子在線版本提供服務的。
但要想在網上獲得成功，一本雜誌不僅可以將其印刷品中的內容轉移到電子領域。在打印內容中沒有足夠的深度或交互性來克服在線介質的缺點。
如果人們期望忍受打開電腦閱讀屏幕，他們必須獲得他們可以隨意探索的深度和最新信息。他們需要有音頻，可能還有視頻。他們需要一個個人參與的機會，這遠遠超出了通過印刷雜誌的編輯頁面提供的機會。
許多人心中的一個問題是，為印刷中的利益集團服務的同一家公司是否會成功在線提供服務。即使是某些印刷雜誌的未來也會受到互聯網的質疑。
例如，互聯網已經在徹底改變專業科學信息的交流。印刷的科學期刊往往流通量較小，價格較高。大學圖書館是市場的重要組成部分。將信息分發給專業受眾是一種尷尬，緩慢，昂貴的方式，但還沒有其他選擇。
現在一些研究人員開始利用互聯網發表科學發現。這種做法挑戰了一些古老的印刷期刊的未來。
隨著時間的推移，互聯網上的信息範圍將是巨大的，這將使其引人註目。雖然今天的淘金熱氣氛主要局限於美國，但我預計隨著通信成本下降以及不同國家可獲得大量本地化內容，它將席卷全球。
為了使互聯網蓬勃發展，必須為內容提供商的工作付費。長期前景良好，但由於內容公司難以通過廣告或訂閱賺錢，我預計短期會有很多失望。它還沒有工作，也可能不會持續一段時間。
到目前為止，至少，用於互動出版的大部分資金和努力只不過是一種愛的勞動，或者是一種幫助推廣在非電子世界中銷售的產品的努力。這些努力通常基於這樣一種信念，即隨著時間的推移，有人會想出如何獲得收入。
從長遠來看，廣告很有前景。交互式廣告的一個優點是初始消息只需要吸引註意力而不是傳達大量信息。用戶可以點擊廣告以獲取其他信息 - 廣告客戶可以衡量人們是否這樣做。
但今天，互聯網上實現的訂閱收入或廣告收入接近於零 - 可能是2000萬美元或3000萬美元。廣告商總是對新媒體不太感興趣，互聯網肯定是新的和不同的。
廣告商的一些不情願可能是合理的，因為許多互聯網用戶對看到廣告並不那麽興奮。一個原因是許多廣告商使用需要很長時間才能通過電話撥號連接下載的大圖像。雜誌廣告也會占用空間，但讀者可以快速翻轉打印頁面。
隨著與互聯網的連接變得更快，等待廣告加載的煩惱將減少然後消失。但這還需要幾年時間。
一些內容公司正在嘗試訂閱，通常會有一些免費內容的誘惑。但這很棘手，因為一旦電子社區收取訂閱費用，訪問該網站的人數就會大幅下降，從而降低了對廣告商的價值主張。
支付內容費用的一個主要原因是，收取少量費用是不切實際的。電子交易的成本和麻煩使得收取低於相當高的訂閱率是不切實際的。
但在一年內，將建立機制，允許內容提供商只收取一美分或幾美分的信息。如果您決定訪問費用為鎳的頁面，您將不會在支票上寫一張支票或收到鎳的賬單。你只需點擊你想要的東西，就會知道你會在匯總的基礎上收取鎳。
這項技術將解放出版商收取少量資金，以期吸引廣大受眾。
那些成功的人將推動互聯網作為一個思想，經驗和產品市場 - 一個內容市場。
本文版權歸©2001 Microsoft Corporation所有。版權所有。
轉載自：
https://www.craigbailey.net/content-is-king-by-bill-gates/
內容為王 - 比爾蓋茨 content is king – Bill Gates (1/3/1996)