

Revenge of the Experts: Is User-Generated Content Out?  - nickb
http://www.newsweek.com/id/119091/page/1

======
pg
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+usn...](http://siteanalytics.compete.com/newsweek.com+reddit.com+usnews.com)

Notice incidentally that reddit is ahead of both of them. Not bad for 4 guys.

~~~
ivankirigin
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
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.

~~~
pchristensen
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.

~~~
Kaizyn
I think you mean 50,000?

~~~
pchristensen
Yes I do. Yes, yes I do.

------
SwellJoe
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.

------
neilk
The suit is back.

