The battle between platforms for publishers and consumers

When Apple releases a product, a service or an update you better not think of releasing anything in the following week, whether you’re Nike, Samsung, or Barack Obama. Why? Because when a game changer speaks, people shut up and the market takes notice.

Last night Apple came to the stage and did a whole bunch of releases, including “OS X” El Capitan, “iOS 9″, ” News ” app, the possibility of” multi windows support “,” Swift 2.0 “,” Watch OS” and the official confirmation of “Apple Music” powered by iTunes. (more about these releases here).

I want to stop though at the “News” chapter that is closely linked to everything that is content marketing, publishing and even advertising. Why? Because I am noticing a new trend among the big players of the online market that mean to control (or monopolize) the distribution of content created by big publishers (currently) and we can certainly expect smaller ones too somewhere in the near future.

Creation vs. Distribution

What is the perfect ratio for a creator (publisher) when it comes to content creation vs. distribution? 40-60, 70-30, 50-49, 80-20? I think that when discussing this chapter we have to take into account the following factors: the culture of the target (who are my consumers, what is it they do, what’s their way of life, where/when/how/why are they consuming the content), time and technology.

There’s too much talk about creating valuable content, about content type (adaptive content) but too little talk about delivery/distribution and impact measuring.

Publishers have had a tough struggle on the pixel market and they had to adapt to that market. Some used to say at the time that print will die, others have said that digital people will no longer consume news but those who knew how to rebrand and find new opportunities to create and deliver the same content from offline to the digital market are now visibly winning. Why? Because

publishing is receiving the proper attention

If we are to take a quick look at the digital world we can see new approaches to user experience when it comes to delivering the content, particularly its consumption. Let’s look at a few important players on the market:

1. The launch of Snapchat’s Discover was for me a prime example for many platforms about what adaptive content for your target means. I’m still taken aback even today when seeing their proper content delivery dedicated to the platform and even so with the latest update where users have the possibility to send news through messages, which means new advertising opportunities on the platform.
2. Until now Flipboard has been the mobile application that many users have embraced because it knew how and what to deliver to the consumer. But if rumors of Twitter buying Flipboard will not come to fruition then the news aggregator will have a few problems. Why?
3. Because Facebook has announced in the past weeks the launch of Instant Articles and the partnership with various UK and USA publishers. In the video presentation everything looks fine but why was the date of the last update made by partners May 13? Perhaps in the meantime the market has heard rumors about what Apple wants to release?
4. Apple News– an app that is already competing with Flipboard and has already partnered with over 20 publishers including Condé Nast, ESPN, The New York Times, Hearst, Time Inc., CNN and Bloomberg. And 20 is a larger number than 9, eh Mark?

Well as said by the great culture teacher of today’s generation “Woe, what do we have here?” – a battle for content distribution on different platforms Snapchat vs. Flipboard vs. Facebook vs. Apple. Here’s a serious battle which will be fought on 3 important fronts:

Publisher vs. Platform vs. Consumer.

I’m very curious to see which publisher will have a better intuition for the ideal platform and which platform will know how to better distribute the content based on user experience.

So my dears, we are witnesses to a serious battle. Who do you think will be the winner and why?

Battle | Shutterstock