I don’t know about you but I think there’s already a lot of good content out there. The problem I have is sifting through it and finding what’s relevant to me and, increasingly, applications on the iPad are reminding me in very striking ways that the presentation of that content is, once again, becoming very important.

Years ago when print content was indeed king, publishers realised that the layout of content and its presentation was key in differentiating their publication for that of their competitors. We still see newspapers today shouting about awards they have received – not for their editorial policy or a particular reporter’s prowess, but for layout and general appearance.

Interestingly, these presentation skills honed during the years when print ruled took a back seat with the rise of internet publishing from in the early 90s. 

Websites still looked okay of course, but the focus shifted towards content in terms of its sheer amount and the new immediacy that the online arena provided.

But as we move now into the age of the ‘app’ from the, albeit relatively brief, age of the browser, focus once again is on presentation and the user experience.

I see this new emerging battleground falling (for the purpose of this brief post) into two broad areas:

Aesthetics and UI

Firstly there is the aesthetic quality of the content and, I include in this consideration, the navigation within that content and other factors such as facilities for our own sharing and doing all that good social media stuff.

In this regard Flipboard on the iPad reigns supreme in my opinion providing both a beautiful interface into my own choice of content coupled with a fantastically intuitive navigation and sharing architecture.

The developers at Flipboard have also invested a lot of effort in working with key content providers to deliver and present pages of content from web pages in a way that would make even dedicated magazine-type application developers sit up and notice.

The other (very) broad area is relevancy and context. 

Relevancy and Context

When I say relevancy, I’m thinking about applications that, for example, attempt to ‘learn’ what you as reader want to read.  A good example of this is another iPad application called Zite.

In addition to identifying key subject areas Zite gives me the option to rate each article I am presented with and read in addition to my being able to ‘tell’ the application that I want ‘more like this’ or ‘more from this subject area.’

I should say that I don’t understand what the algorithms are in the background or how they are working.  But I like very much what they’re trying to do.

However, the beautiful presentation of the content and great navigation experience offered by Flipboard means that it currently gets my vote.

Like Zite, the opportunity for applications to ‘learn’ about us is huge. From the contextual advertising model as pioneered by Google in Gmail to all my implicit preferences as indicated by my online searches, my twitter followers and followees and Facebook’s Social Graph, we’ve only just started scratching the surface.

Another increasingly key area, in addition to giving me stuff I like, will be the provisioning of that good stuff in the right place at the right time.

The big challenge to application developers now who are building for smartphones and tablets will be contextualizing that information depending on where I am, what I am doing and, indeed, ‘where I am’ in respect to my relationship with a brand or a company or a transaction process.

I think my last point should be explored further in a subsequent post where this very important area deserves further explanation and exploring.

For now, however, let me conclude with my take on the ‘Content Is King’ sound bite.

“Content is not King – it’s the Prince – possibly – “Presentation, Relevancy and Context are the new Kings” – the three new Kings if you like.

Let’s all hail the (new) King(s).