Towards the end of 2009, I was invited to an event by the Associated Press for a brief overview of their AP Archive product.
About the AP Archive:
AP Archive is one of the leading sources of news and entertainment film and video footage in the World. As well as footage from the Associated Press, AP Archive represents footage from some of the most extensive moving image collections, from all over the world.
Looking at some of their footage, the one word that comes to mind is impressive. The AP Archive has captured invaluable moments in history over the past century.
Given that there is an entire team working on the archival and sales process, it leads to the question — what is the value of digital content?
Traditional content is worth a lot and the competition over rights is aggressive. However, the same doesn’t exist in the digital space.
To my knowledge, the only memorable digital content produced through social means was the (now) well-recognized Hudson crash image: http://twitpic.com/135xa
However, this image was used without compensation by nearly every news organization. If a “breaking” image doesn’t have value, then what value does entertainment content have on the web?
On a personal level, the content that we produced for Visual Avenue has no value to us as a company or to the general consumer. They may still view the content, but they certainly won’t miss it once it’s gone. If you produce digital content, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this matter.
