No it's not?

There really isn't any specific reason to assume that content should be king - even if we can figure out what that might actually means. Since the objective of most aggressively edited and marketed sites is generating more page views (which isn't necessarily the case for all sites) what gets called king is whatever can help you generate those views. An article on an interesting, but (to me at least) confusing site takes issue with Gates and tells us that he's most definitely wrong. Instead:

Ecommerce sites - not content sites - are where the bulk of the money is being made.

The rest of this short article is a sort of "in your face" proof, and many of the other articles on this site seem to make the same argument, in much the same manner. (A good example is this article which, from a very different perspective, covers much of the same territory that I'm trying to cover.) These people certainly have a point, and seem to know what they're doing, but either they're so successful that they don't have to make themselves known, or somewhere along the line they've missed something important.

Another, perhaps more convincing, dissenting view is that content is only of secondary importance and that what really brings people to the internet is connectivity (though the jury's still out on that one as well). Over four years ago First Monday (a source of real content if there ever was one) posted the article Content is Not King that argues this point.

Go to: Now what did he mean by that?, or
Go to: Content? Did somebody mention content?