Flypaper’s New Marketplace Doesn’t Stick

November 6, 2012 by Dave Haynes

For a couple of years now various vendors have been quietly telling me of their plans to develop a content marketplace that would enable their own clients, and people using other services or platforms, to have a central clearing house for content.

It is something that’s absolutely needed and would be effective in putting network operators together with content providers and developers. It would also be a mechanism for operators to re-purpose and sell content they developed for their own networks that they are no longer using (ie health and lifestyle content).

I’m still waiting to see such a marketplace bubble up, and I was intrigued when my seemingly daily email from Flypaper Studio (you’re bordering on being a spammer, guys) announced the Flypaper Marketplace, “the go-to place for Flypaper partners to share and sell templates, components, media and more. Flypaper Marketplace provides a virtual one-stop store for Flypaper partners to share unique content and media assets for use in digital signage projects.”

“Flypaper Marketplace provides a revolutionary environment for Flypaper partners to share and sell beneficial digital signage content to other Flypaper users,” says Don Pierson, Founder and President of Flypaper Studio, Inc. “Flypaper Marketplace is a valuable resource for Flypaper users to find and download exceptional content of all types to enhance digital signage projects.”

So first, Flypaper is a nice production tool in a limited kind of way, and something smaller network operators on tight budgets can look at as a means to animate content.

BUT … there is nothing revolutionary about an online marketplace (you want to see a real one, go here).

Second, the content now available on the marketplace is anything but exceptional. Most of what’s available (and there’s not much, but it’s early) would be just plain terrible for networks. There’s too much going in the layouts, the fonts are too small, and on and on. This stuff doesn’t even clear the mediocre bar.

The idea with the Flypaper marketplace is that partners can become contributors and submit their original content to the Flypaper Marketplace at no cost. Contributors upload their media and decide whether to share assets free of charge or at the price of their choice.  Additionally, Flypaper Marketplace visitors can browse and search assets, download desired files and begin using content immediately in projects. Flypaper Marketplace hosts both free and for sale content.

Some company will indeed build a proper marketplace for digital signage content, but so far, this ain’t it.

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