Pirouz Nilforoush

OK, so I just came out of the “Make vs. Gather? Successful Content Business Models” panel and quite frankly I was very disappointed with how this panel played out. Here is the description of the panel according to sxsw.com:

You make content. Good stuff. But it takes time, and money. Now you’re thinking - maybe I’ll aggregate content and be a trusted filter. Well, here’s your chance to grill the emerging aggregators. We’ll bring together folks from Web Publishing, Media, Indie Media, and content aggregation platforms to show what’s working and where it’s going.

Sounds like an interesting panel right? Well that was the case until the presenter - Steve Rosenbaum of magnify.net - decided to turn this into an hour long session about all that is good with aggregation and curation of content while completely ignoring the economics of content businesses at play. According to Steve what is working online is finding the best content, placing this content on your own website and monetizing it without sharing advertising revenues with the original content creators. Of course I am a big fan of content curation and aggregation when it is done properly (meaning there is credit given to the original content creator through a link and the entire content is not available to be consumed on the aggregating site) as it helps users find relevant and engaging content while establishing the credibility of content producers and helping them attract new eyeballs. Examples used in this panel however were around the notion of taking an original piece of video content and embedding this video on an aggregating website without giving credit to the content producer or sharing the advertising revenues with them. In other words stealing original pieces of content and making money from other people’s hard work! There was never a discussion around how this approach impacts content creators that are spending tremendous amounts of time and money to create original content and end up getting nothing in return! As Steve puts it such is the new reality of today’s world and publishers need to embrace this new approach - that is having their content stolen by content aggregators and monetized without their permission.

Did I mention Steve is the founder of magnify.net - a company that provides a platform for people looking to create their own video sites by aggregating and curating videos from around the web? After all Mr. Rosenbaum if content aggregators are the only people making money online (which is NOT the case today) then who is going to make original content for them to aggregate?