The most precious #commodity of the 21st century

Maybe you would say it is #Oil, #Gold, and/or Copper.

Well, you would be wrong because as important as these 3 natural resources are there is one heavily underpriced commodity with a finite quantity that significantly outshines them all in the modern-day world.

You see, back in the 20th century, the wealthiest, most influential, and most #successful individuals and companies in the world were indeed the ones who controlled the natural resources including energy (Oil & Gas) as well as the infrastructure metals like steel, iron ore, and copper.

The largest #companies of the 20th century:

Exxon Mobile, US Steel Company, Chevron, Saudi Aramco, Koch Industries

The wealthiest individuals of the 20th century:

John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Mukesh Ambani, Charles Koch

Fast forward to today and you will realize that the economy has shifted. 4 out of the 5 largest companies in the world today have gotten to where they are thanks to the garnering, exploitation and retention of that one extremely valuable and finite commodity called #ATTENTION

#Amazon, #Alphabet, #Apple and #Microsoft together with Meta not that far behind on the list, are the new behemoths. These companies are at constant war with each other for capturing the largest portion of the global attention pie. The reason why this pie is limited is that technically people only have 24 hours a day to keep their eyes and ears open. And that's if we assume we don't sleep

So, while the oil magnates were focused on buying up pieces of land rich in the most precious commodity of the 20th century in order to have control over it, the modern-day #digital tycoons have specialized in building powerful digital platforms, which effectively play the role of enormous digital #realestate properties holding billions of people in them.

Why does that matter to you?

While John D. Rockefeller was not really open to sharing or giving you a piece of the oil pie, the structure of the modern-day world and these huge centralized attention platforms allow anyone to capture a certain percentage of the scarce and highly valuable commodity called attention. Not only that, but anyone has the opportunity to use the massive leverage of immediate, global and practically unlimited distribution that their media & content enjoy when using these platforms

With the most recent #ios14 privacy-related updates the online space is now leaning heavily towards the #content side of things, thus opening up the door to literally anyone who knows how to create engaging, entertaining and educating content that keeps the viewers' attention longer.

It's important to realize that content should not be viewed as the output of your #business or yourself but rather as the input in the global competition for consumers' attention. The real output of your #media efforts is the #audience that you garner along the way, which compounds over time and adds more value to your #brand.