Shareable vs Monetizable

Introduction

On this episode of the Exponent podcast, they spoke about attention.

Their theory was that some content lends itself well to sharing because it requires very little attention (e.g. GIFs of cats), but is difficult to monetise. On the other end of the spectrum is content which requires a large amount of attention (e.g. listening to a 1 hour podcast), which is far less shareable, but is easier to monetise.

The challenge

The challenge is making money under these contraints. You might have shareable content, but how do you make money from it? And you may have a great way to monetise, but how do you grow your customer base?

Obviously it’s all about using shareable content, and converting those users into customers of a paid product, or consumers of another type of media which is more easily monetisable.

The companies which will succeed on the internet will be able to crack this.