4 ms·

Revenge of the Experts: Is User-Generated Content Out?

5 points by nickb 19y ago

pg 19y ago
They wish. But they could answer this question from their own traffic stats. Has newsweek.com traffic been growing sharply? Has wikipedia.org traffic been falling? Actually newsweek.com traffic has gone up a lot in the last 6 months. But I think this is because Newsweek got their act together more than that user tastes have changed. There's no similar uptick at usnews.com. http://siteanalytics.compete.com/newsweek.com+reddit.com+usnews.com http://siteanalytics.compete.com/newsweek.com+reddit.com+usn... Notice incidentally that reddit is ahead of both of them. Not bad for 4 guys.
- ivankirigin 19y ago
  The important part of the Compete score is hidden: demographics. How many boomers use reddit? How many college students read newsweek.com? I'm amazed it is taking so long for hard news sites to turn into well designed group blogs. You can still have foreign correspondents and investigative journalism. They'll just be treated like really good bloggers. The high end of blogging has made significant moves towards becoming legitimate media and journalism organizations. Newsweek should meet them in the middle.
nickb 19y ago
This whole article is a complete mess. This part is one of the funniest and shows how clueless the mainstream media really is: >>Last summer researchers in Palo Alto, Calif., uncovered secret elitism at Wikipedia when they found that 1 percent of the reference site's users make more than 50 percent of its edits Huh?! As soon as you read a huge misconception like that, most people have a tendency to completely disregard the whole argument. Finally, as we all are aware, experts never argue among each other and they are never wrong. Right.
- s_baar 19y ago
  Newsweek? More like Non-Newsweek!
- pchristensen 19y ago
  I loved that one: 1% of how many users? 5 million? So there are 5,000 people writing an encyclopedia for free? Wow, how undemocratic. 1% sounds small until you look at what the base is.
  - derefr 19y ago
    There are 5,000 people editing an encyclopedia for free--the majority of edits are simply small clarity/spelling/grammar/punctuation revisions, and the wikipedia "core" making them is made of mostly janitors. The content writers are by and large infrequent and/or first-time users. [citation needed]
  - Kaizyn 19y ago
    I think you mean 50,000?
    - pchristensen 19y ago
      Yes I do. Yes, yes I do.
- cawel 19y ago
  Slate.com had an interesting article on this topic of Web 2.0 democracy: http://www.slate.com/id/2184487 http://www.slate.com/id/2184487 And it went in the same direction as this Newsweek article: debunking the myth that most of the users are contributing to Digg or Wikipedia, in their respective community, as implied by the Web 2.0 democracy concept. Rather, "At both Digg and Wikipedia, small groups of users have outsized authority." (Slate.com) Think about the tight moderation at Slashdot given to a selected few, or the 1% at Wikipedia. Most of Wikipedia edits are not done by 100%, not 50%, but only 1% of their users. As a result, one cannot call it a web 2.0 participative democracy. And I think that's the message from both Newsweek and Slate. Of course Newsweek "wish[es]" the experts had more eyeballs/attention, since that's their business, to be news experts. But while user-generated content is certainly not "out" (that's probably exaggerated wording to catch the eye), the point is that there is a desirable need to have those experts (or in other words a kind of elite) in order to have quality content.
neilk 19y ago
The suit is back.
SwellJoe 19y ago
Whenever an article quotes Andrew Keen I'm pretty confident I can ignore the article in its entirety. I've read (most of) his book, and was embarrassed for him. He's strikingly bitter about having failed in the valley, and now strikes out viciously at its most recent success stories. I have no dog in the "user generated content" race, but I can still see the reality of new media, and it definitely will involve user generated content along-side traditional "expert" generated content, with more growth on the amateur side than the expert side for the foreseeable future. No amount of wishful thinking on the part of "expert" media can alter that...but, if they accept that the game has changed and learn to play the game, they can have advantages in taking on the newcomers in the field. Conde Naste acquired Reddit because they are smart enough to see it, and want to play by the new rules rather than sit out the round on the bench. Likewise for MSNBC and their Newsvine acquisition (though it's probably less smart than the reddit acquisition, as reddit is just better than newsvine, despite the really cool tech behind newsvine). Some company will even probably be foolish enough to pay 200+ million for Digg, because they want to play by the new rules--it'll take them a long time to see a return if they pay such a stupidly high amount for a site the size of Digg, but they will at least be in the game.

5 points by nickb 19y ago

pg 19y ago

They wish. But they could answer this question from their own traffic stats. Has newsweek.com traffic been growing sharply? Has wikipedia.org traffic been falling? Actually newsweek.com traffic has gone up a lot in the last 6 months. But I think this is because Newsweek got their act together more than that user tastes have changed. There's no similar uptick at usnews.com. http://siteanalytics.compete.com/newsweek.com+reddit.com+usnews.com http://siteanalytics.compete.com/newsweek.com+reddit.com+usn... Notice incidentally that reddit is ahead of both of them. Not bad for 4 guys.

ivankirigin 19y ago
The important part of the Compete score is hidden: demographics. How many boomers use reddit? How many college students read newsweek.com? I'm amazed it is taking so long for hard news sites to turn into well designed group blogs. You can still have foreign correspondents and investigative journalism. They'll just be treated like really good bloggers. The high end of blogging has made significant moves towards becoming legitimate media and journalism organizations. Newsweek should meet them in the middle.

nickb 19y ago

This whole article is a complete mess. This part is one of the funniest and shows how clueless the mainstream media really is: >>Last summer researchers in Palo Alto, Calif., uncovered secret elitism at Wikipedia when they found that 1 percent of the reference site's users make more than 50 percent of its edits Huh?! As soon as you read a huge misconception like that, most people have a tendency to completely disregard the whole argument. Finally, as we all are aware, experts never argue among each other and they are never wrong. Right.

s_baar 19y ago
Newsweek? More like Non-Newsweek!
pchristensen 19y ago
I loved that one: 1% of how many users? 5 million? So there are 5,000 people writing an encyclopedia for free? Wow, how undemocratic. 1% sounds small until you look at what the base is.
- derefr 19y ago
  There are 5,000 people editing an encyclopedia for free--the majority of edits are simply small clarity/spelling/grammar/punctuation revisions, and the wikipedia "core" making them is made of mostly janitors. The content writers are by and large infrequent and/or first-time users. [citation needed]
- Kaizyn 19y ago
  I think you mean 50,000?
  - pchristensen 19y ago
    Yes I do. Yes, yes I do.
cawel 19y ago
Slate.com had an interesting article on this topic of Web 2.0 democracy: http://www.slate.com/id/2184487 http://www.slate.com/id/2184487 And it went in the same direction as this Newsweek article: debunking the myth that most of the users are contributing to Digg or Wikipedia, in their respective community, as implied by the Web 2.0 democracy concept. Rather, "At both Digg and Wikipedia, small groups of users have outsized authority." (Slate.com) Think about the tight moderation at Slashdot given to a selected few, or the 1% at Wikipedia. Most of Wikipedia edits are not done by 100%, not 50%, but only 1% of their users. As a result, one cannot call it a web 2.0 participative democracy. And I think that's the message from both Newsweek and Slate. Of course Newsweek "wish[es]" the experts had more eyeballs/attention, since that's their business, to be news experts. But while user-generated content is certainly not "out" (that's probably exaggerated wording to catch the eye), the point is that there is a desirable need to have those experts (or in other words a kind of elite) in order to have quality content.

neilk 19y ago

The suit is back.

SwellJoe 19y ago

Whenever an article quotes Andrew Keen I'm pretty confident I can ignore the article in its entirety. I've read (most of) his book, and was embarrassed for him. He's strikingly bitter about having failed in the valley, and now strikes out viciously at its most recent success stories. I have no dog in the "user generated content" race, but I can still see the reality of new media, and it definitely will involve user generated content along-side traditional "expert" generated content, with more growth on the amateur side than the expert side for the foreseeable future. No amount of wishful thinking on the part of "expert" media can alter that...but, if they accept that the game has changed and learn to play the game, they can have advantages in taking on the newcomers in the field. Conde Naste acquired Reddit because they are smart enough to see it, and want to play by the new rules rather than sit out the round on the bench. Likewise for MSNBC and their Newsvine acquisition (though it's probably less smart than the reddit acquisition, as reddit is just better than newsvine, despite the really cool tech behind newsvine). Some company will even probably be foolish enough to pay 200+ million for Digg, because they want to play by the new rules--it'll take them a long time to see a return if they pay such a stupidly high amount for a site the size of Digg, but they will at least be in the game.