Newsweek has an article that argues that Web 3.0 is going to be all about injecting the experts back into the information production and dissemination process. I think they've gotten the big picture badly wrong, but the saddest quote in the article is about why one of the 'experts' they interview thinks this change will come about:
Fueling all this podium worship is the potential for premium audiences—and advertising revenue. "The more trusted an environment, the more you can charge for it," says Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis, a former AOL executive who was previously involved with several Web start-ups. It's also easier to woo advertisers with the promise of controlled content than with hit-and-miss blog blather. "Nobody wants to advertise next to crap," says Andrew Keen, author of "The Cult of the Amateur," a jeremiad against the ills of the unregulated Web.
Pretty amazing that the argument is that advertisers are going to fight to prevent the amateurs from taking over information processes so they can protect their advertising revenue. (Newsweek is, of course, heavily supported by advertising.)
It's also interesting that none of the examples they give in the article -- from Google's wikipedia killer to the Maholo search engine -- have any real traction in the marketplace. I think we're seeing a fantasy here. People whose business depends on the elites managing who reads what where and when are arguing that we have to return to that model to make sure "good" information gets out.
I was speculating the other day about how different the world would be if there had been some way that radio and television could have been supported through a fee-based model, rather than the advertising-based model that we have today ...
John
Mark Twain, Primacy and Authoritarianism
I can't help but think of Mark Twain's famous observation: "It is very difficult to get people to understand something when their salary depends on their not understanding it".
I was recently reading, [re]thinking and writing about ReadWriteWeb's article on Re-thinking Recommendation Engines, in which the author talks about what he calls the "inertia" effect - but which I would call the "primacy" or "recency" effect - with respect to ratings (our ratings are affected by other recent ratings). But I think the larger point is that most of us tend to conserve energy in most of our activities, and thus don't go much out of our way to read, think or write for ourselves.
This, in turn, sets the stage for authoritarianism (or elitism) where we delegate responsibility to others for telling us what we should read, think or write - or increasingly, watch or listen to. While there are some hopeful developments in the political realm, the last two U.S. presidential elections - and the widespread acceptance of the authoritarian activities of the pseudo-elected officials who have taken over and protected their power - leave me concerned that there may be other forces at work outside of elitism in information and advertising ... though upon further reflection, these dimensions of elitism are probably not so separate as I might like to think.
Fee-based radio
Public radio is for the most part fee-based radio, is it not?
Dan
Couldn't agree more...
I think you hit that right on the head. I also expect that we'll see more of this for a while. The part that I think is funny about this is it completely misses the point of the long tail. What is currently the most successful advertising platform on the web is all about the long tail.