Click here for your free trial subscription . Jesse Kornbluth is talking tough. Cheering comes from the audience of more than 500 Web executives who clearly think abuse of the bland term has given the entire category a bad rap. But the presumed king was swept aside by sites promising commerce, community, and personalization technologies. Now the much-maligned term content is enjoying a renaissance, and those who produce it have a new sophistication about its uses and abuses.
Good content is a critical component of a successful Web business.
Online content is a slippery concept, denoting everything from text-only news stories to streaming video feeds. Some sites refer to their catalog and product descriptions as content, while others reserve the term for less mercantile forms of text, audio, video, and animation. Kornbluth stresses that to be effective, online content needs to be held to the same standards as those applied to the printed word. In their strategies, websites should focus on a manageable niche and deliver the best possible information to serve that market's interests, Kornbluth argues. REI, the big outdoor and sporting goods retailer, launched its first website in September 1996.