Digital media's growth obsession is a problem

Adam Tinworth
Adam Tinworth

Rafat Ali on digital media’s bad week:

Don’t blame investors for investing, that is their job. The only job founders/companies have, meanwhile, is to build a sustainable, long term business. “High growth at all costs” is NOT a necessary condition to it, merely a causation founders have backed themselves into if they raise too much money.

There seems, to me, to be one central truth to any content business in the digital age: attention is far from infinite, and is very, very scarce.

Any business model that demands increasing attention in an attention-poor age is doomed to failure, sooner-or-later. Much better, for all but the very biggest sites, to find a comfortable niche, and figure out how to make diversified revenue from it.

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Adam is a lecturer, trainer and writer. He's been a blogger for over 20 years, and a journalist for more than 30. He lectures on audience strategy and engagement at City, University of London.

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