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Content and Community – Stratechery by Ben Thompson

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One of the oldest and most fruitful topics on Stratechery has been the evolution of the content industry, for two reasons: first, it undergirded the very existence of Stratechery itself, which I’ve long viewed not simply as a publication but also as a model for a (then) new content business model. Second, I have long thought that what happened to content was a harbinger for what would happen to industries of all types. Content was trivially digitized, which means the forces of digital — particularly zero marginal cost reproduction and distribution — manifested in content industries first, but were by no means limited to them. That meant that if you could understand how the Internet impacted publishing — newspapers, books, magazines, music, movies, etc. — you might have a template for what would happen to other industries as they themselves digitized. AI is the apotheosis of this story and, in retrospect, it’s a story the development of which stretches back not just to the creation of t

Content and Community – Stratechery by Ben Thompson Skip to content Content and Community Monday, July 21, 2025 Listen to Podcast Watch on YouTube Listen to this post : Log in to listen One of the oldest and most fruitful topics on Stratechery has been the evolution of the content industry, for two reasons: first, it undergirded the very existence of Stratechery itself, which I’ve long viewed not simply as a publication but also as a model for a (then) new content business model. Second, I have long thought that what happened to content was a harbinger for what would happen to indu

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