value accrual to content creators

just listened to the ALL-IN podcast from this week where they discuss the changes in Reddit’s plans to charge money for third-party apps to gain access to its data.

the internet made world-wide distribution possible

social networks then built on top of this massive paradigm shift and their main value proposition over the past 10+ years has been that they own the distribution.

when your moat is your audience + the content your audience generates, the natural inclination is to monetize it. charge for what’s valuable right?

I think moments like these show us how valuable that content and audience really is.

Sure Reddit can come up with a rev-share for the mods but is that enough?

Content-distribution costs have come down to 0. Algorithmic feeds like TikTok are only going to accelerate this trend. Tiktok will serve content to exactly who is interested. No more scrolling to your bookmarked subreddits to find your community. It comes to you..

In an age of algorithmic feeds - we’ve become so used to getting the exact information/content we want instantly that a disturbance like subreddits being down feels like an astronomical loss.

I’ve been seeing less of one of my favorite IG meme pages @patiasfantasyworld on my feed and my Instagram usage is down as a result. whether the creator is posting less or the feed is serving me less of the content - it’s just wild to me that the individual content creator I want to see can have such an effect on my affinity to a platform.

Chamath said “In this current version of the internet the value is going to go further further further away/erode from these centralized organizations and more towards the individual people” (hmm…sounds like web3 rhetoric 👀🌶)

you can’t fight the trend of content having more power than it has ever had before.

We went from creators having to pay for access to distribution (ex: music labels paying radio stations to promote new songs) → to platforms paying creators to protect their moat (eg: Kick paying gamers to compete with Twitch). Are we just going to pass the buck back and forth to decide who has to pay or is there a new way to think about value accrual for content-networks?

I love Beehiiv for realizing the value of content early. From the outside Beehiiv launched what looked like a Substack competitor. But Substack took a percentage of creator’s revenue. Beehiiv said nope - we are a tool. Pay us a SaaS fee and we will help you create the best content, but you keep the revenue. The network effects came organically.

I’m writing from Beehiiv now.