Barry Diller, the entertainment and home shopping impressario who is in the process of streamlining the operation of recently renamed
InterActiveCorp, quips a notable line in a
Tech Central Station article entitled "The Hyperactive Corporation": "When you talk about content, what you're really talking about are goods and services� the selling of goods or the dissemination of services." While recognizing that hawking zirconium rings and Elvis paintings is a far cry from building portals for the financial securities industry or the biotech industry, Mr. Diller has nailed an essential component of today's content marketplace. With the increasing contexuality of today's marketplace for professional content, having content as a supporting element of building a relationship that will result in a specific transaction of some sort increasingly becomes the denominator of determining content value. Yet most professional content is still packaged and priced as if it were fuel oil. Hard to believe that the entertainment industry could be a leading voice on these matters, but there you have it.