Categories
content strategy

Scarcity, Not Content, Is King.

YouTube wants me to get paid. They sent me an email, telling me as much. They sent me two, actually.

Why?

My two videos posted there have been viewed enough, it would seem, that Google views them as a driver of revenues. [Placement of ads next to popular videos, and sharing the revenue is a totally sound plan to capitalize on those impressions.]

My video candidates, as selected by YouTube:

Twenty-six seconds of a rabbit, who happened to be suffering from “Jackalope Syndrome.” (Shope Papilloma Virus – the Wikipedia entry features my photograph of said rabbit. The editor contacted me for permission to use it.) 48,900 views, at the time of this writing:

Thirty-two seconds of the obscure Sony Discman D-88 CD player in operation. It was made for playing those equally obscure three inch CD singles that never really became mainstream. 65,349 views, so far:


After receiving these emails, I have determined, without question, once and for all, that content is not king. Scarcity is king.

Would there be any appeal at all in these videos if there were even 100 others like them? Not likely. Since they may never see another video of a Jackalope, the entire planet is forced to view mine. Well, maybe not the entire planet; just those actually looking for a Jackalope video. Scarcity, in this case, gives my video the edge.

As distribution of content becomes easier and more instantaneous, someone may well be poised to eat your lunch. Companies will be forced [if they haven’t already] to decide if what they have to offer people is unique [scarce] and quick-to-marketplace. The latter point is of interest as well, because scarcity without an outlet becomes effectively non-existent.

[It would also be effectively non-existent if not accompanied by the appropriate metadata, but that is another post altogether.]