Playing with the future - Part 2 - Content Ownership

As a follow up to my previous blogpost, here's the second concept we came up with on the topic of "How will content authors create content in 2020".

This idea might be a bit more radical than the first one... "Content ownership will be diluted".

There are many types of content creators out there, from the marketing-snazzy cloud-sourcing heavy world of "modern social media buzzword compliant marketing" to the corporate workflow-heavy legal review world of most of the customers I work with.

In some industries, it is perfectly acceptable to have someone from outside the organization to create content for you - be it via "endorsed blogging", or "fan content on Facebook", or even comments on specific pages that get promoted to full page articles given its quality. This is something we already see happening today on a regular basis.

But the brand fan of the future is different. The brand defender of the future is possibly 16 years old, and is compelled to share due to sharing being in their DNA - hyper-connectivity does that to you. So companies - including workflow-heavy legal compliance companies - will go out of their way and find methods to assess how much of a fan are you really, and possibly give you special rights to create content on their websites. 

If you believe in my company and brand even more than I do myself, why would I stop you from contributing positively?

Here's how I think this will impact the world of content:

1. Gamification principles and social media tracking will be used to accurately measure a person's brand-awareness level - you want to find those brand defenders out there, and you want to empower them
2. Brand defenders will - from outside your firewall - have special privileges on your content platform - be it by being allowed to review content, or by being able to create content themselves. This process already happens today, but in a rather unstructured way. (I certainly get emails from brand defenders about content published to Tridion World, I can only imagine that Bart Koopman gets even more)
3. Brand defenders will be given access to marketing strategies, campaign ideas, and any other branding material. They will carry the flag for you in exchange for early access to data, exclusive T-Shirts and bragging rights. Why wouldn't you reward them in their own coin (data)?

In other words, brand defenders will become your "trusted content contributors".

I can certainly see a future where even the most legalese of texts gets reviewed by people that are -- at first glance -- completely unrelated to your company, but that know your brand value better than the people being paid to create a brand value. Where content is created for your website by your most loyal fans, and where content management tools are built with this in mind from the ground up. Where content review is done by people outside your corporate legal department (but likely not excluding legal completely), and where you provide your brand defenders with all the tools and data they need to be heard.

Tune in soon for my next non-binding futuristic play: Context Engines.