The Medium
Member Mailing: The Best Future Media Business Model For Consumers & Investors Is... Snap?
One wouldn’t think there is much in common between three stories that emerged over the past week:
- The Chernin Group (TCG) invested $100MM in a new firm, Night Capital, co-founded by Reed Duchscher, the manager of the YouTube megastar Jimmy Donaldson (aka MrBeast),
- Disney CEO Bob Chapek talked up virtual worlds as “next-generation storytelling”, and
- Snap CEO Evan Spiegel told the Code Conference he is making it a priority for the company to look for opportunities to make money in areas like Augmented Reality.
But, they each and all are different bets on post-‘streaming wars’ media convergence”, or how direct-to-consumer (DTC) streaming business models enable companies to monetize the same consumer via additional DTC models beyond streaming:
- Night Capital and TCG are betting on creator economy models to deliver the best value for consumers and investors;
- Disney is betting that it can evolve into an ecosystem that delivers the “delight” of Disney consumers both physically and virtually; and,
- Snap is investing in augmented reality (AR) technology and creator tools to become both an ecosystem that delivers “delight” and the means for creator economy models to thrive.
These are completely different objectives that share key building blocks, making their respective visions of creating user “delight” and shareholder value more similar than different. By looking closer at these building blocks, a new optimal business model for post-‘streaming wars’ media convergence” emerges.
It looks a lot like Snap.
Five models for the best creation of value
Last week I wrote about an exchange I had with Andy Weissman, a Managing Partner of Union Square Ventures in which he posed the question of which model delivers the best creation of value “for users mainly but also shareholders as that flows from ...