Platforms, AI, and the Economics of BigTech

Too much content, too little attention

We’ve seen this before. With the rise of social media, everyone became a content creator, but only a few mastered the sort of attention that compounds to long term trust.

Most creators chased volume. But with more content, attention became the limiting factor. Brands that really succeeded rose not through content, but through narrative and taste.

The same pattern had played out a century earlier. Industrialization had transformed manufacturing. What once required artisanal labor could now be replicated at scale. But this didn’t make every product valuable. It simply shifted the point of differentiation. As Henry Ford’s assembly line made cars affordable, it was companies like General Motors that figured out how to win through brand, design, and segmentation. As production scaled, value migrated from the factory floor to the design studio and marketing department.