On the Value of Repurposed Content…

Dan Blank directs us to a brilliant post by Fred Wilson. Wilson says, “And one of the biggest changes out there is the world of distributed media. Feeds, widgets, embed codes, apis, and other tools that allow the publisher to make their content available on other pages. You have to do this, it’s critical and it’s way more than just getting your content on my daughter’s MySpace page. The web is disaggregating itself and reassembling itself in front of our very eyes as users take control of more pages on the web every day…. But when I put on the hat of a publisher, I want a simple way to do all of this. And that takes me back to the feed. I like the idea of write once, publish anywhere and everywhere.”

In our opinion, Wilson nails it. The true power of the NXTbook isn’t that it’s cool (though it is) or that you can embed audio, video or Flash inside it (though you can) or even that you know everything readers do inside it (though you will) - the magic of the NXTbook is that it takes a PDF that you created once, turns it into a permalinked online publication, complete with RSS feeds. In other words, it does exactly what Wilson wants to do: let him write once, publish anywhere and everywhere.