I mean if you go with that take literally everything anyone creates for any reason is content marketing. A novel? Content marketing for the author. A painting? Content marketing for the artist.

Of course the version that exists today is content marketing, but if that's what their goal was from the very first one it was very incompetently done. You really can't imagine some of their designers and engineers just wanted something cool at the end of the year they could do with all their data?

It's like saying Strava Heatmaps were "100% content marketing from the start". Sure, they're making money from them now, but that take is pretty cynical.

And I don't mind well-done ad campaigns, I have tickets to watch the British Arrows awards in a theater on Saturday.

Kinda. Content marketing has a pretty broad definition. But a book author’s core business tends to be books, and a painter’s work tends to be paintings. But Spotify’s core business isn’t infographics about how much music I listened to. That’s about the line for me.

> if that's what their goal was from the very first one it was very incompetently done

Not surprising. Most people aren’t great at most things, particularly the first time they try them.

> You really can't imagine some of their designers and engineers just wanted something cool at the end of the year they could do with all their data

Of course I can imagine this! But that doesn’t change what it fundamentally is once it’s available to the public. You can make something and not understand what it is — determining whether it’s through accidental or willful ignorance is an exercise for the reader.

Thats how people work. That’s not a particular HN “brand”.

Yes, except I think the average person isn’t quite so aggressively proud of their dislike of advertising as the average HN commenter.

I’ll never cease to be amazed by the number of people commenting on the content marketing project of a VC firm that “ads never work on me.”