Of Content Hubs and Pipe Dreams
Or, why your “one-stop shop for all things X” is never going to work.
Nearly every website RFP I read seems to contain the words “content hub for [topic]” or “platform for [topic].” I get the allure. You have some of the world’s leading experts on your topic. You produce great content on your topic. Why not curate all the best stuff? That way everyone can just come right to your site to learn whatever they might need.
It’s appealing. But it rests upon a misunderstanding of just how thoroughly the Internet has changed things.
Aggregation Theory
Ben Thompson’s Aggregation Theory is a powerful framework for understanding business in the age of the Internet. If you have some time, you should definitely go read Thompson’s full explanation. If you’re in a hurry (or just need a quick refresher), here’s a very high-level summary.
Markets generally have three parts: suppliers, distributors and consumers. Pre-Internet, companies found success either by monopolizing one part or by integrating two parts. Just about every successful business was built on controlling distribution and nearly all of those companies integrated distribution with suppliers.
That combination was driven mainly by practical considerations. Forming relationships with all your suppliers is difficult, but doable. Forming relationships with all your consumers was impossible.
The Internet changes that dynamic. It makes the distribution of digital goods (effectively) free. It also makes it possible to form relationships with your consumers at scale. And you build those relationships by giving consumers a better experience than they can get elsewhere.
Building that relationship is still a lot of work, but if you can pull it off, you’re in the driver’s seat. Once you have a relationship with consumers, the suppliers will come to you. After all, you’re how suppliers reach consumers. That kicks off a virtuous cycle. The more suppliers you get, the better the experience is for the consumer. Better experiences attract still more consumers, which attract still more suppliers. Eventually, you end up aggregating all the suppliers (and all of the consumers) into a single place.
Netflix is a good example of a successful aggregator. The company got its start by renting DVDs. (Remember those?) And it attracted customers by offering a much better experience than you could get from your local Blockbuster. (Remember those?) No late fees. Everything is always in stock. Eventually Netflix had a massive subscriber base, which allowed the company to pivot first to streaming video and later to original content.
Content Hubs
So let’s return to the content hub. If you want to be an aggregator, you’ll have to offer users something that they can’t get from the competition. But the thing is, your competition isn’t other people working on your topic.
It’s Google.
Google is the ultimate aggregator. Like Netflix, it began with a better user experience. Before Google, users relied on human-curated web directories to find information. Webpages multiplied far more quickly than directory listings, so search was spotty at best. Google’s automated indexing of the web meant a vastly bigger library of results. It was fundamentally a better product. Users flocked to it. And once users came to Google, suppliers—the people creating all those webpages—came running as well. A whole industry sprang up around making websites more accessible to Google. That, in turn, made Google’s algorithm smarter, which improved its service, which brought still more users. Lather, rinse, repeat.
When you try to build a content hub around a topic, you’re attempting to aggregate something that has already been aggregated. Indeed, your content hub is essentially an attempt to recreate the pre-Google, human-curated web directory. Those lost out to Google 15 years ago. They’re not going to fare any better this time around.
For starters, you’re just going to get creamed in terms of coverage. Suppose you want to be a one-stop shop for all things methane reduction. As of the date publication date of this article, Google returned 26,200,000 results for “methane reduction” without quotation marks and 40,900 results for the same term with quotation marks.
Good luck curating that much content.
An even deeper problem, though, is that you’re not going to be able to put everything relevant on your hub. Partly that’s just logistical. There’s just too much of it. But partly its a question of legality. If you start cutting-and-pasting articles about methane reduction from Vox or the New York Times or Wikipedia directly onto your site, someone is probably going to complain.
That means the only real option for you content hub is linking to other people’s stuff. And that, in turn, means your offer is effectively: search engine, but with a dumber algorithm that’s limited to a single topic, and covers only a small fraction of content.
It’s very hard to see how that’s a better user experience than I get from Google. What’s more, users are probably going to have to use Google to find your content hub in the first place.
Imagine if Netflix had launched by offering brick and mortar rental stores, but instituted higher late fees, stocked fewer movies…and then put the only entrance to their stores inside existing Blockbusters.
That’s your content hub.
A Case for Platforms
All that said, I don’t think the text hub is doomed. I think the topic based text hub doomed. Pulling out content based on topics is pretty much the essence of keyword searching. And keyword searching text on the web belongs to Google. Microsoft couldn’t knock Google off that perch. Your curated hub is going to fare far, far worse.
But while Google is great at finding content by topic, it’s much worse at finding content by type.
Policy research—the kind of content produced by think tanks, academics, and many government agencies—is pretty unique. As I’ve argued before:
[policy research] requires at least some degree of expertise to produce. It also requires access to data. Indeed, there’s a good argument to be made that it’s willingness to wade in and get your hands dirty wrestling data into shape that separates the policy wonk from the pundit.
In other words, policy research is a specialized type of content. It’s niche, to be sure. But in a world where the Internet turns the entire world into an addressable market, niche audiences can still be pretty big.
More crucially, “show me results on methane reductions, but only ones from policy organizations,” isn’t something Google does very well. Short of writing some sophisticated custom search queries, you’re going to have a tough time using Google to find all things policy research. (Or even all things policy research on topic X.)
So while you can’t build a topic-based content hub with a better user experience than Google, you might well be able to build a platform around policy research (or policy bundle) that offers something Google can’t quite match.
It’s still a big lift. But it’s not one that requires you to out-Google Google.
