Content and Value

  One indicator of the continuing "content is king" meme is the movement of a number of major Internet firms into the content business.
  Major social media services are working to integrate media content into their social media platforms.  Facebook is making deals to stream movies and music concerts through its service.  Twitter is making sponsored deals with high-profile figures to create Tweet streams at big events like the Consumer Electronics Show.
  In the last year, Google has made significant moves into content services, with the addition of the Google Music cloud service, and the addition of content sales and rentals to the Android Marketplace.  Google's YouTube operations have not been ignored, with Google spending $200 miliion (so far) to acquire high quality, high demand, content, and content creators, to supplement the user-generated videos on YouTube.  Google's been working with US studios on a movie rental service. Outside the U.S., they've made deals to stream movies and sporting events.
  Amazon is making the move from just selling books to publishing them.  Amazon's Kindle books service has encouraged and provided a market for self-published works since its introduction, but Amazon took the move into content further with the creation of its own publishing house, releasing titles in both print and online editions.  Apple's followed suit in promoting self-publishing, even to the extent of offering a free iPublisher software tool to facilitate book creation.
  In addition, numerous traditional and new media outlets that started as content aggregators and distributors are making deals to create new content for their services.  This started long ago with pay TV and cable channels, but in the last year, AOL purchased the Huffington Post collection of blogs to boost its original content offerings, and Netflix is commissioning original series for its streaming service.  And, as noted briefly earlier, YouTube is pushing professional-quality content, with new dedicated channels and investment in production houses.

What all of this shows is that good content drives demand, and has significant value.  The push for more original content also reflects the increasingly competitive marketplace at work - having unique content is a competitive advantage to be exploited.

Source -  Content is Dead -- Long Live Content,  OnlineVideo Insider