The Digital Land Grab

In the article I wrote last month on Feb-27, I shared that every company should be a media company. Many businesses are still caught in-between the traditional publishing program they had done before, like print, editorial, advertorial etc. on a traditional publishing platform, versus the new, more innovative digital and social programs.

Attention is the currency and the game that everybody must play in. It’s not as easy as moving into the online world, it’s also about following where the attention of your consumers are, regardless of platform bias.

Last January of this year, a digital and social report was released by hootsuite and we are social. The Philippines now has 67Million internet users or about 63% of the population with an average of 9 hours spent online. The same amount and percentage for active social media users while having 61Million or 58% of mobile users with an average of 4 hours using mobile internet.

The same report also shared that 74% of the Philippine population believes that new technology offer more opportunities than risk. More and more people are watching and consuming content online (written, video, audio), increase in online spending (ecommerce, online marketplaces..etc..) and the like.

Now, let those figures sink in and audit how much of what you do is taking advantage of the opportunities that come with those figures.

The social networks will encourage brands to become broadcasters as mobile video and social TV content take the spotlight. The bigger companies are fighting over innovative new technology and platforms for their needs but for the startup entrepreneur, small business, social can still present a lot of opportunities.

The first wave of land-grabbing happened with the purchasing of the dot-coms which was made accessible via the search engines at the time.

Each website is a piece of land and each domain is owned by someone. Here’s a few examples:

• VacationRentals.com was purchased in 2007 for USD35Million
• Also in 2007, porn.com was sold at USD9.6Million
• Facebook purchased fb.com in 2010 at a price of USD8.5Million
• Then on the same year, sex.com was sold for USD13Million

Depending on who you ask, there were also other waves of digital land grabbing from IoT (Internet-of-Things) to platforms and so forth. Right now, we are still in a social-land grab and not many people even realize it.

If websites are properties and google is your “guide” then the same can be said for other social platforms since Youtube is considered a search engine, then there’s also land grabbing going on there; the same is true with facebook and the like platforms.

In the coming years, the Internet will continue to expand and add more digital “real estate” which may come in the many forms that we have yet to even perceive.

However, of course we are unsure that what you got will be worth anything in the future, however it’s still important.

Remember that there is an alternative side of land value, which argues, it’s not necessarily the location, it’s what you do with it. The same could be said for factories, mines, warehouses and many other physical locations of businesses that hold massive amounts of revenue despite horrible locations!

I consider this as a lazy investment since its still underpriced and you can still afford to pick/choose which areas to land-grab compared to later which will probably be more difficult.

There’s value in owning your name. Pay for it later or protect it now, while there’s still time.

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