Why 2014 Will Be the Year of Content Overload
And How Technology Will Save Us Once Again
Content marketing is all the rage. Experts are predicting that it will be even bigger in 2014. Everywhere we look, we find another guru telling us about the importance of blogging, tweeting, and sharing content online.
All of this sounds great, but when you think about it, how are we going to consume all of this content? It’s not like we're able to increase the number of hours in a day or the amount of information we can process.
So when you look at the situation in that light, with every indication pointing towards 2014 as being the year of content marketing, we're going to get buried under a mountain of content before we even know what hit us.
In a similar fashion, Psychologist Barry Schwartz talks about the paradox of choice and how having too many options can lead us astray. Well, the information we choose to consume is certainly a choice, and when given all of the various options we have these days, it is easy to feel overwhelmed.
What’s the solution? Technology.
The big winners in the next 18 months won’t be the content creators. Rather, the winners will be the folks who are figuring out creative ways that allow us to consume more content in less time.
“I have a theory about the human mind. A brain is a lot like a computer. It will only take so many facts, and then it will go on overload and blow up.” — Erma Bombeck
Some names that come to mind include Circa, Umano, Snapchat, and of course, Vine.
Don’t believe me? Just look at the success that Vine has experienced in the last year.
Think back to 2006, when YouTube was all the rage. If anyone would have come along and said they were going to revolutionize video by limiting the user to a six-second clip, you would have laughed them out of the room.
Six seconds? Are you kidding me? That was the mentality just a couple years ago when things weren't so busy. Now, six seconds seems like a blessing.
Vine is killing it right now because each clip comes with a promise to not take up more than six seconds of your day. That is something we can all appreciate.
Twitter is in a similar situation to see tremendous growth, because the ability to get your story out in 140-character chunks will be very valuable as the world gets even noisier than it is now.
“…a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention…”
— Herbert A.Simon
As for news, check out what the folks at Circa are doing. They're turning news stories into short summaries. No longer do we need to read a lengthy article to get caught up on current events.
The other way technology will take center stage in the months ahead will be based on our increasing reliance on filtering algorithms.
Google has gotten extremely good at filtering search results and Facebook is so good at filtering our news feeds that it is even a little creepy.
Without such filters, we would never be able to keep up with what matters most to us, because there’s just way too much content to take in.
So, in 2014, I think we're going to see three things develop:
- Content overload will become a pressing social issue.
- Technology that helps us consume information in smaller bites will win big.
- Our reliance upon filtering algorithms will be stronger than ever.
Don’t get me wrong. I'm all for content marketing. In fact, that’s what I do for work. It just goes back to something social media marketing superstar Gary Vaynerchuk likes to say: Marketers ruin everything.
Content marketing can be whatever we want it to be. I'm just afraid to see it turn into something of a monster, where quantity matters more than quality.
These are just some things to think about as we move into another exciting period in the history of communications. It’s not all gloom and doom, but it certainly is something to be mindful of.
In closing, let me leave you with a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson. He noted, “There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant.”
If only Emerson could see what we've become, he'd understand how relevant those words are today.
