Wall Street - Not Apple - Might Offer the Best E Reader Direction

That “thing” that was roughly the size of a shoe box, I explained, was a cell phone and that one was state of the art then. It was a tool of the power brokers and filthy rich like Gekko, as the rest of us commoners were still tethered at the time.

The Amazon Kindle was the first device to validate the long-in-the-waiting belief that one day masses will get their reading from portable handheld screens. As revolutionary as we will find the coming Apple iSlate (or whatever it will be called) which might leave the Kindle behind, the E Reader / tablet technology of tomorrow will continue to evolve fast and furiously. And each new technology innovation will quickly render the previous to be about as innovative as that shoebox to Gekko’s head.

While it is essential that news creators stay informed and ahead in what technology can offer in content distribution and commerce, it would be a major mistake for them to tie their fortunes to any particular technology, no matter how dazzling.

Now more than ever, news creators need their first focus to be on unique, quality content and on the positioning and awareness of that content within this wildly developing technology world. With the evolution of E Readers and tablets, readers will have exponentially more choices for content packaged in more ways than ever before. While this might offer grand potential for news distribution and commerce, those that don’t make quality and unique content their priority are likely to find that the technology will only hasten their demise as readers leave for all their newly discovered choices.

When Gekko was walking that beach in the Hamptons, he knew his business was the content he was relaying over that phone and not the technology itself. News creators need to remember that.

More sobering, even if a news creator gets so far that they have quality and unique content positioned on an E Reader or tablet, as of today there is still no sufficiently viable business model to deliver them a return. That aspect of this business is evolving as well, just much more slowly.

Stay tuned.