The Internet revolution of the 90's literally changed the way people lived lives. Once the power of a networked world became apparent, adoption was merely a question of when, not if! The famous Moore's law of the semiconductors, was put to test as semiconductor vendors could not keep up with chip manufacturing advancements (as process nodes fell as quickly as the famous stock markets crash of late 2008) in catering to the massive processing demands of the Internet infrastructure.
Being the late-summer-early-fall season of hurricanes and cyclones catching attention across the world, I will happily borrow the terms one can relate to! While the whirlpool of the Internet backbone revolution was prominent, the real tsunami happened at the application level. Design aesthetics were suddenly the norm, with Apple and Samsung proudly brandishing form factors with packed performance to exploit the internet, that couldn't have been dreamed of even half a decade ago. In between these systems, there was a small storm brewing on the Content vs. Context front. Put simply, to a lay man, Content is what is being presented and Context is the relevance of what is presented in the circumstance.
The world is said to be a cyclical place where trends come and go. Today, the fashionable trends are said to have been borrowed from the 70's. Likewise, Content and its value which played a very prominent role --- and people were willing to pay a premium for quality content --- were suddenly lost in the noise as the camera gadgetry (wizardry?) in smartphones coupled with the Youtubes of the world created plenty of consumption avenues. Suddenly, there was so much content that it became hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. Context came in, and was touted as the next best thing to happen to mankind. Every Tom, Dick and Harry would talk about Context in the same breadth as Strategy and Elevator pitch, which no doubt the folks on Menlo Park and Wall Street happily basked under. However, the time tested truth emerged fairly quickly - you can have the best of Contexts being identified, and content automated to suit that context, but at the end of the day, you had a user hooked not based on the relevance, but the actual Content itself, and the value it ultimately provided!
In management parlance, you are as good as your last successful product. In Media parlance, you are as good as your Content! After all, the grub at the end of a long day is dependent on how well and how efficiently the content is monetized. Long live Content!!!
