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When it comes to digital content, we always seem to be looking for the next big thing-from websites to social networking to apps. In that quest to be the next big thing, many technology startups come and go, while others strike with that magical combination of the right technology for the right device at the right time.Still others quickly grab our attention, only to reveal a lack of staying power over time. For example, "We saw a big pop a year or so ago around funding mobile companies based on location-based [technology], such as Foursquare, and those companies are not too hot right now," says Richard Hull, a former film and TV producer who advises many of the nation's largest media and entertainment companies on content strategy, finance, and distribution.

In the information circulating about digital natives, there are many references to the idea that older generations always think the upcoming generation is different from previous ones, but that this generation of digital natives really is different. They have more communication devices at their disposal. They are much more comfortable with them and much more adept at using them. Having grown up in a tech-heavy environment, they are quick to pick up on new technology and expect improvements or new offerings to come rapidly.

Once the limits and benefits of each social medium are established and the audience is determined, a media company must decide how it will use content to reach readers in this new forum. Most editors agree that they hope to foster interaction-to allow their readers to not only get their content, but also to respond, knowing that the staff is getting the readers' viewpoints.

Millennials are a driving force for mobile services and will increasingly be so as they move into the world and take on more responsibility for their own lives. According to Nielsen's 2009 "How Teens Use Media" report, 77 percent of teens in the U.S. already have a mobile phone. Wireless communication, a constantly evolving space, presents a big opportunity for companies. Mobile marketing and its promise has been hyped for a number of years, but only recently has it shown signs of delivering on that promise. There have been a number of hurdles holding back mobile as an effective channel: privacy concerns, the expense of data plans, ease of use, speed, and consumers' not wanting spam on their mobile devices, to name but a few.

In the lawless, uncharted Wild West that is social media, Twitter and Facebook are dueling cowboys while a tumbleweed named Tumblr drifts over the barren landscape. The two behemoths draw pistols at dawn for the elusive goals of increased ad revenue, engaged readership and stronger editorial content.Spaghetti western metaphors aside, it's clear that media professionals' interpretation and use of social media vary widely. While some prefer to foster a sense of community with their readership, others seek to unload content, or seek out story ideas, or hand the spotlight over to their advertisers.

According to IDC (International Data Corp.), the number of U.S. users accessing the internet via mobile devices will exceed those using wireline devices, such as PCs, by 2015. The research firm cites the use of smartphones and enthusiastic adoption of tablets as the force behind this trend. These statistics have long been a source of excitement for publishers looking for new revenue streams, but with the explosion of platforms comes the pressure to be all things to all people. From iPhones to Android devices, from the Kindle Fire to the iPad, from mobile-optimized sites to custom-designed apps, publishers struggle to find the right balance between fiscal responsibility and being on their readers' platforms of choice.

Digital natives have a heightened expectation of immediacy in their desire to gain information and be able to react to it now. A key element in gaining and keeping the attention of this generation is to regularly modify and update your product and message. Don't be stagnant. Keep the message simple and to the point. Accustomed to the rapid evolution of the tools that they use, digital natives want something fresh from companies trying to market to them.

With the emergence of digital natives, companies are questioning how best to gain brand awareness with this sizable new group. As Celia Goodnow of the Seattle PI noted in her article "Millennials Thrive on Choice, Instant Results," Millennials are the second-largest generation in U.S. history after the Baby Boomers. They are coming into their own and companies want to determine how best to market to them and generate sales from them.

A global study conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), titled "Maturing with the Millenials," claimed that more than half of the executives polled had not yet developed a way to target, attract, or retain Millennials as customers. This is a significant insight, since this generation is and will continue to be a formidable purchasing body. They are just beginning to graduate from college, enter the work force, and establish lives of their own. With those life steps comes the need to make purchases, including the most basic ones such as a car, furniture, and food. Digital natives didn't just appear on the horizon, and it is surprising to see that companies are, to a great extent, still up in the air about how to go after this audience.

It's true in any industry: you never know where the next success story is going to come from. That's especially true in the world of digital publishing, where anyone with a passion and a little bit of know-how can start a site or community for like-minded people across the globe. No where was this more evident than in the story of Sean Collins, an icon in the surfing community and founder of Surfline.com.

A number of companies have taken the "we know our market" approach by using a simple demographic definition of the market, as opposed to defining the market based on an understanding of the drivers of demand. Knowing these drivers offers far more insight when establishing a market strategy.

Sharing your thoughts and activities on Facebook in and of of itself is not necessarily a problem. The problem comes when users forget that everyone in their social network is reading their posts. When you post something in frustration over your boss, co-worker, spouse, or friend, remember that the boss, co-worker, spouse, or friend-and all their networked friends (and all of their networked friends)-may also be reading your posts. It is possible to take part in Facebook and still maintain a modicum of privacy. To accomplish this, keep these 10 lessons in mind.

It is helpful to keep in mind a simple adage coined by Ray Krok, the founder of McDonald's: "Look after the customer and the business will take care of itself." This is true for any generation (or population for that matter). Understand your customers, what motivates their demand, and meet those needs. The fact that Millennials now use multiple means to obtain and share information creates both a challenge and an opportunity. For a long time, marketers took a broad approach, as the channels available to them were geared toward a mass market strategy. The message could be targeted, but the medium reached the masses. Contrary to some current beliefs, those avenues are still available.

The days when companies could buy a magazine ad or a 30-second primetime spot and have a well-rounded marketing strategy are long gone. These days, having a web strategy is not only important but increasingly complicated. Just in the last 10 years, companies have gone from thinking about advertising on websites and with search displays, to having to incorporate blogs, social networks, and mobile platforms. While all these new ways to interact and be informed may be good for the general public, for a company's marketing team they can present a daunting task: How do you get a customer to focus on your product when their attention is being pulled in a host of different directions?

There seems to be a great deal of uncertainty about how to tap into the digital native (the Millennial generation) market. Take a breath -- the task is not as difficult or as different as some would have you think. Digital natives may be a new crop of potential customers, but many of their core drivers of demand are similar to what motivated previous generations. It's important to remember that when establishing a marketing strategy, the first step remains the same: Start by understanding what it is that the market is looking for.

From an outsider's perspective, being a professional freelance writer may seem like the dream job. After all, you can make your own hours, work from the comfort of home (or from your local Starbucks), and handpick which projects you want to pursue based on your level of expertise or interest. Those who are active in the field know this is far from true. For many freelancers, finding a job that appropriately compensates their level of skill, and relaying that job into a steady gig takes patience, perseverance, and a whole lot of practice writing query letters. But there's good news for freelancers. The market is changing.

The EContent team suggests some sites, projects, and resources that, while outside the scope of the EContent 100 list, are well-worth a closer look.

The EContent 100 judges include fellow Information Today, Inc. editors, EContent magazine contributing editors, and other experts in the digital content industry.

The 2011-2012 EContent 100, a list of the 100 Companies that Matter Most in the Digital Content Industry.

There are plenty of changes afoot on this year's list, as well as at the magazine. As you read through these pages, you'll notice a change in the EContent 100 categories-and a subsequent change in the companies we're honoring this year. As we focused less on enterprise content companies and more on the world of digital publishing and media, the judges had to re-imagine the list-and relearn the judging process. While many of the old standbys still made it onto this year's list, there are plenty of fresh faces as well-many of which are shaking up the content industry.

In publishing, small is the new big. An increasing number of publishers are releasing e-singles -- short works published digitally on a variety of platforms -- to generate ancillary revenue, build brand equity, and reach new audiences. Among those joining the e-singles market are Hearst, Rodale, Princeton University Press, and as recently as last week, Penguin.

Somewhere between unknown, independent bloggers and traditional publishers with well-respected reputations are the sites known as content farms--websites that generate a large quantity of content specifically designed to rank high in search engine results. They range from local, content-driven sites such as AOL's Patch and Examiner.com to how-to sites such as Howcast and Demand Media's eHow.com to topic-focused sites such as Suite101 and Associated Content.

Few, if any, would argue that the internet has dramatically and permanently changed the publishing industry. As print publishers have scrambled to find ways to compete with and, ultimately, embrace the digital world, some are excelling through a combination of traditional and online options. Others, new to publishing, are operating in the online-only world, but everyone is dealing with the age-old problem of circulation building and audience development.

Social media, tablets, and eReaders have not only changed the publishing model, they have given authors and publishers a whole new avenue to engage readers beyond books. Now, with the launch of interactive websites that accompany these books, such as J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter experience, Pottermore, and the continued growth and acceptance of mobile apps, the list of digital possibilities is getting longer.

The recent proposal of the Commercial Felony Streaming Act, and the uproar over the potential it holds to send artists like Justin Bieber to jail for copyright violation, has put the subject of intellectual property and copyright on the front page. The following is an excerpt from a chapter in the book, Dancing with Digital Natives: Staying in Step with the Generation That's Transforming the Way Business is Done. The full chapter is titled: "Ethics, Technology, and the Net Generation: Rethinking Intellectual Property Law" and is written by Albert M. Erisman. The book is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other retailers in e-book and print format.

I first met Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute and organizer of Content Marketing World, at the Niche Magazine Conference in February 2011. He was a featured speaker at the event, and he spoke on a number of topics, mainly social media and content marketing. I enjoyed every session I attended, but his keynote on content marketing was what stuck with me. As the founder of the Content Marketing Institute, you'd expect him to be passionate about content marketing. It was more than that, though. Pulizzi, who's been around the publishing business for a long time, talked about content marketing in a way that "just made sense" for both marketers and publishers.

Whether you're a traditional publisher with corporate money at your disposal or a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants blogger, you should already have a solid strategy in place that guides the content you offer on your website. For most publishers, no matter their size, that strategy involves the kind of content that your site visitors read. Attention-grabbing headlines and search engine optimization (SEO) are no doubt at the top of your priority list, but with the popularity of websites such as YouTube, easy-to-use digital video equipment, and computer monitors that can double as television screens, content providers are beginning to recognize the importance and value of having an online video content strategy as well. It's becoming increasingly necessary to appeal to site visitors who want to view, not just read, your content.

People love saving money. Sales and coupons are time-honored advertising traditions for a broad field of retail businesses, from supermarkets to office suppliers. The latest manifestation of human beings' long-running obsession with coupons is the daily deal-websites and mobile apps that deliver a selection of daily coupons and deals to savings-hungry consumers.Companies such as Groupon, Inc. and LivingSocial have made a name for themselves by combining daily coupons, group buying, and local marketing. And the success of these two companies is spawning a thriving ecosystem of businesses, publishers, and deal networks all looking to get a piece of the pie.

When considering the future of web content management (WCM), it is perhaps helpful to remember that the technology is designed to systemize and automate that which has long been practiced by retailers and expected by consumers in the real world. Just as a shopper who enters a sporting goods store and asks for help finding a fishing rod might beat a hasty retreat if the clerk brings back a soccer ball, visitors to websites expect to be listened to and to receive personalized service. When you figure that an online shopper is not a car drive away from another store but rather just a few quick keyboard strokes away from another website, the pressure to get WCM right mounts exponentially.

This past April, 1 month after her highly publicized resignation as CEO of NPR (National Public Radio), Vivian Schiller delivered a warning to her former public radio colleagues, saying, "There is massive change on the horizon." She cautioned that "if you don't aggressively reach out to new audiences on new platforms, someone else will," and she urged public radio to embrace technology by letting go "of the nostalgia for how that content is delivered and how that community is forged. Give the audience what they need and how they need it, and you will be fine." Whether there's any truth behind Schiller's prediction that "new digital-only startups will enter the marketplace in audio" and public radio will find itself "longing for the days when the competition was the radio station that overlapped on your broadcast signal" remains to be seen, but as audiences find new digitally friendly ways to consume content across all public media sectors, her prophecy may soon become reality.

There is little room for debate: The introduction of the iPad has changed the computing environment irrevocably. It's a device that is rapidly breaking down the barriers between the traditional desktops, laptops, and mobile devices and significantly impacting how-and where-consumers access information. As a consequence, another trend is also emerging: the move from the wide-open web to semi-closed platforms that use the internet for transport but not the browser for display.

On the surface, it might seem that meeting the needs of a niche audience provides very few opportunities for creativity. It stands to reason that the content demands of a niche audience are limited, because audience members only need content and services related to a specific subject matter or industry and nothing more. That assumption couldn't be further from the truth.

Meet the five new fundamentals of the information experience. Whether it's on a desktop monitor or a tiny mobile screen, ‘information experience' is the moment when the user experience and information-intensive applications meet. Over the past few years, as the volume of structured and unstructured data within organizations has exploded and the channels on which that information is consumed has diversified, content consumers have been revising their expectations for what qualifies as an acceptable information experience.

Between iPhones and other smartphones, Kindles and other ereaders, iPads and other tablets, PCs, and even traditional mainstays such as print and television, consumers are getting content from more sources than ever before. While this multitude of content sources offers new revenue streams, it also poses a challenge to publishers seeking to maximize the value of their content on as many mediums as possible. However, many publishers are going mobile and finding success.

By now, most of us know the basic ingredients for a good website. The mobile experience, though, is still a relatively new concept compared to the traditional web—so figuring out how to provide the best mobile search interface remains a work in progress. Yet organizations with digital content are wasting no time working with the technology to expand their traditional web search capabilities into the mobile space.

Discovery has never been a simple process for organizations, even in the "old days" when discovery generally entailed gathering piles of documents into large boxes and wading through them by hand. Information long ago evolved from print documents to electronic formats, which has created challenges and opportunities.

The content strategies of old media outlets are getting a complete overhaul: undergoing a little nip here and a tuck thereto meet users' expectations for instantaneous, scalable delivery to the devices and platforms of their choosing while stillproviding content worth viewing. Some companies find themselves stuck between old and new media silos, but according to Ron Miller, a freelance journalist covering the technology and media industries, the real solution lies in picking the best from both worlds--thoughtfully adapted content that provides additional context through new media devices and applications to create an innovative user experience.

People often take for granted the notion that content comes bundled with an inherent value. It's an easy mistake to make, especially with so much digital content available instantly with a price tag helpfully affixed for immediate purchase and consumption. All content experiences are not created equal, however, and that experience can make a world of difference in how valuable content is for a user. Even excellent content can be dragged down by a poor user experience that prevents users from easily finding and engaging with the content they need. With user expectations rising steadily, that failure to engage can translate into poor site ROI and even a major impact on a company's brand.

Content migration can mean many different things to different organizations. Yet regardless of the origin of the content and where it's moving from and to, there's no disputing the fact that most organizations have a lot of content. And as their business plans and processes evolve, a migration of that content into a new system is often a necessity.

By now, as the saying goes, "there's an app for that," no matter what "that" might be. Although these on-the-go applications might have captured the imagination of an increasing number of U.S. mobile users, digital content creators are now looking to redefine, fortify, and even replace the app with more comprehensive mobile content delivery strategies that pack in additional relevance, context, real-time information, and functionality, without needing to rely on one OS or handset.

In October, The Wall Street Journal reported that several popular Facebook applications had been transmitting users' personal identifying information to literally dozens of advertising and internet tracking companies. While Facebook maintains that there is "no evidence that any personal information was misused or even collected as a result of this issue," not all observers have been appeased.

Consider the value if you could learn about the world around you based on where you are using the GPS capability in your smartphone. Imagine for a minute holding up your phone and having relevant content delivered to you based on your physical location at any given moment. There are complex and useful applications of the location dynamic beyond simply communicating "I'm here."

Learn more about the 2010-2011 EContent 100 Judging Team.

Our list of the 100 companies that matter most in the digital content industry.

Welcome to the tenth annual EContent 100—our list of companies that matter most in the digital content industry.

The EContent team suggests some sites, projects, and resources that, while outside the scope of the EContent 100 list, are well-worth a closer look.

Regardless of where they work and who they are, all employees have valuable knowledge to give and receive. That knowledge is perhaps one of the most important assets an organization can possess. Companies are increasingly recognizing the value of that knowledge, and how leveraging collaborative tools integrated with knowledge capture can not only streamline complex business processes but also provide valuable insight organizations can use today and tomorrow.

It is the very breadth, depth, and possibility inherent in semantic technology that can prevent content companies from experimenting with a technology that may be one of the most useful commercial innovations of the past decade. The murkiness of the word itself—not to mention the standards, acronyms, and jargon that can dominate the discussion of semantics—only adds to the confusion.

For almost as long as there have been books, there have been authors trying to get their manuscripts in front of an acquisitions editor. Today, there are many roads that can lead writers to professional publication. While the destination is often the same, new routes are emerging all the time.

With the proliferation of search-oriented online content providers such as AOL, Yahoo!, Demand Media, and About.com, internet users are increasingly likely to find that most of the general searches they do return results from these SEO-oriented content creators and so-called "content farms". Whether this is a good or a bad thing from the user perspective remains to be seen—and opinions vary. But from general tactics, to long tail search and universal search strategies, SEO remains critical to web publishers.