Big Tech faces a decline in attention economy, writes Harini Calamur

Way back, in the early days of the internet, the technology landscape was dominated by a set of names you don’t see anymore. There was Netscape, the browser that allowed access to the very limited internet that existed. There was Yahoo, the dominant search engine. There was Kazaa, the main source of file sharing. There was Hotmail that provided free mail, allowing millions to have a personal email id for the first time. There was fierce competition and unlimited consumer choice. And all that disappeared over the next 20 years, as the tech space began getting dominated by a few names. Collectively called FAANG – Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google – began dominating the technology landscape, and between them controlled the eyeballs of substantial chunks of populations across the world. In the last ten years or so, these giants have grown from strength to strength increasing their stranglehold over the marketplace. And now that is changing.

Each of these giants built their empires by cornering attention in the attention economy. The term “attention economy” was coined by Nobel Prize Winner and psychologist Herbert Simon. He said “What information consumes is the attention of its recipients. Hence, a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention” – and as these giants began consuming more and more of our attention, it left less of our attention for other things. Reed Hastings of Netflix famously said, “You get a show or a movie you're really dying to watch, and you end up staying up late at night, so we actually compete with sleep,” and any of us who has binge-watched will attest to this. Each of them took away our time and attention from real-world activities, and that changed the world we lived in.

Each of these tech giants provided something unique to the user, and that allowed the user to stay in the ecosystem without ever leaving it. With Facebook, it was an ecosystem that allowed you to connect with family and friends. With Amazon, it was the delight of finding new products that you never knew you needed. With Apple, it was the elegant product design, and the sheer usability of it. With Netflix, it was the delight brought on by great viewing recommendations. With Google, it was the search that was so very accurate, the mailbox that would meet all your needs, free maps, and so on. Each of these delivered immense value in the areas they operated in and reaped the benefits. They engaged our attention, the most valuable resource in the attention economy – and manage to stay on top of the game. And the attention that we gave them was so pervasive that it pretty much made us wedded to these platforms to the exclusion of all else.

But as generations evolve, so do their interests and the platforms they use. And the FAANG constituents are finding this out the hard way. Each of them is seeing a drop in attention – the main currency of the system. For example, Google Chrome is losing users to Microsoft Edge. Google search – the glue that holds the rest of the suite together – is slowly losing credibility - with SEO-driven content and sponsored content taking up most of the results, it is difficult to get accurate results quickly, and that is sending more audiences elsewhere. Facebook has seen declining Daily Active Users (DAU’s) – losing over a million users worldwide. Apple seems to have lost its sheen since the death of Steve Jobs. Its unit sales have been declining steadily since 2014. It is now just one more hardware/ecosystem company – albeit a remarkably successful one. And finally, there is Netflix which announced this week that 200,000 customers worldwide no longer wanted to chill with it. The company believes it will lose 2 million more paying subscribers this quarter, and its shares got battered, losing 40% of their value. Of the big five, Amazon is the only one that is not showing a decline in customer base. But recently, as it upped the price of a Prime membership in the USA, it faced a backlash from customers who threatened to quit. We, the audiences, have gotten so used to free, or next to free, that we expect the higher and higher value of service at lower rates. And, new entrants into the market – flush with VC funds – are able to meet that need for “free” and “new”.

The core problem seems to be that of changing generations and changing tastes. The generation that loved Netflix, Apple, or Facebook has grown older. Is busier and, the big question is whether the younger generation will keep on with the platforms of their parents, or will they move to newer platforms. Across the world, (except in India where it is banned) youngsters seem to be enjoying the randomness of user-generated content on Tik Tok in longer forms. Instagram (also owned by Meta the parent company of Facebook) is preferred by a younger generation that is using it for a variety of things including social shopping. As they begin dominating the economy, the big five will have to see how to keep them engaged, the way they did the earlier generation.

But despite the shrinking levels of attention, each of these giants is incredibly profitable. The threat to them today is less from the distracted customer who has gotten diverted by other activities or platforms, and more from regulators and political groups. Regulators want to break up these companies, while political groups have a list of grievances from taxes paid (or not paid) to content carried or censored. And it is this tussle between shrinking attention from customers, and increased attention from regulators and groups that will be the next major hurdle for the big five. The battle for control of data, and the control of content is coming up next on our big and small screens. And it would be interesting to see how that pans out.

(The writer works at the intersection of digital content, technology, and audiences. She is a writer, columnist, visiting faculty, and filmmaker. She tweets at @calamur)