Content has always been king on the web; the web is content. It's no surprise, then, that we may be taking traditional web content - and therefore traditional web content management - for granted, and are widening our focus to new content services and tools.

The graph above uses Google Insights for Search to display the relative interest (based on U.S. search volume) for three related topics: web content management (in blue), reputation management (in red), and social media tools (in yellow/orange).

It's clear that web content management searches have halved over the last five years; the same period has seen reputation management and social media tool searches increase from almost nothing to not much less than the current volume for web content management. What do these changing interests mean for the Content Management industry?

Based on an informal survey of the main CMS vendors, the average lifecycle for Content Management System major versions (i.e. major versions usually representing a change in architecture) is two to three years.

I've placed green bars on the above graph at the end of 2009, and three years earlier at the end of 2006; these bars representing the approximate dates that new versions of a CMS product might be released. As is evident, the environment (in terms of user interest of various online priorities) in which each version is planned and released is significantly different.

This makes the case for developing a Content Management Platform rather than a strict Content Management System. By this, I am suggesting that the Content Management strategy and tools of an organisation should not be based on specific features and tactics (which in 2006 might have included 'MySpace integration'), but rather on long-term strategies, granular services (APIs) and core software attributes (such as usability, modularity and support for a wider developer ecosystem), all of which can adapt and grow with the changes in web technologies and behaviours.

This is the basis of the Amaxus vision.