TL;DR:
Content creation is exploding while human attention remains finite.
Most content receives minimal engagement despite massive production volume.
Distribution power increasingly determines content success.
Static content formats limit audience engagement opportunities.
"Elastic content" could adapt its depth to match individual reader interest.
"Most books should be blog posts, most blog posts should be tweets, and most tweets shouldn't exist"
There's a lot of content in the world. So. Much. Content.
Probably too much.
Yet, the rate at which we produce and publish content will likely grow exponentially from here. And when writing "we," I actually mean (dun-dun-dun-dun) the Robots.
Take YouTube, for instance:
Approx 700K hours of new video is uploaded to YouTube every day
The median video has 35 views
68% of videos have zero views
Zero.
There are "only" ≈5.5B people with an internet connection in the world. Each one has 24 hours in a day. Eight hours for sleep, eight hours for work. That leaves eight theoretical hours to consume content.
The means of production and distribution has come down to such a level that everyone can be a creator and a publisher (good). But it also creates a situation where supply of content far outstrips demand (challenging). It also marginalizes the value of that content (bad).
Sidenote: My thesis is that we will unlock "net-new" attention for leisure, entertainment and media as a function of AI efficiencies in the workplace. But AI will also turbocharge the speed of content creation, which will likely counter-balance this anyway…
A few implications:
The value (and importance) of distribution continues to increase
Content is pushed toward each end of the spectrum: big catch-all content, infinite small niche content. This motion forms the Content Barbell
He who has the distribution can also control the algo → monetize curation
Sometimes I even wonder if it's worth writing yet another newsletter.
And yet, here we are :)
Static Content → Elastic Content?
The one thing that isn't changing (thus far) is the nature of content. When an essay is written and published, it's done. It's out there in its static form. Same with video. Podcasts. Movies.
Lately, I've been toying around with the idea of what it looks like if the above wasn't the case.
Here's an example: I listen to a lot of podcasts. Most of them are OK. They last an hour and that is enough. Or sometimes too much. But once in a while, there's a combination of topic/host/guest that resonates so much that when the ≈hour long episode is done, I want more. I could have listened to another hour of the conversation. Maybe two. But it's not possible – because the podcast episode is a static recording.
What would it look like if content wasn't static, but elastic?
Going back to that initial quote: what if a piece of content could be discovered as a tweet, but expands in line with the depth it resonates with its readers?
For some, it's experienced as "a tweet" (small piece of content). For others, it expands to a full-length essay, and maybe beyond.
Maybe essays become living things by having companion agents that provide depth of context, research, etc. on passages the reader pauses with.
It could be an interesting way to leverage the generative capabilities of LLMs not to steamroll human creators, but add a pulse to their work.
Given my new-found love for vibecoding, maybe I'll try to create a proof of concept to better explain what the fuck I'm talking about here.
Until next time.
