Disrupt Me, Maybe?

by Ali Sternburg on August 24, 2012

The New York Times had an article this week on the ubiquitous song “Call Me Maybe.”  Ben Sisario explained how “how much the hitmaking machine, as well as the music industry itself, has been upended by social media.”  He demonstrated how critical the Internet —particularly YouTube—was to the song becoming popular.  The other major catalyst was Twitter, in large part a tweet from Justin Bieber.  Sisario also explained how “Mr. Bieber’s role in popularizing the song reflects the importance of both social media and old-fashioned celebrity promotion.”  (Side note:  Can anyone read “Mr. Bieber” with a straight face?)

The New York Times even tweeted the article in a wonderful, cheeky way:

In addition to this organic marketing of the song, it became popular to cover or lip-sync the song, including by celebrities.  The article mentions some of the most popular, including: lip-sync videos from Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, and the US Olympics swim team; the “Share It, Maybe” Cookie Monster parody; and the mashup using Barack Obama video clips.  Fans are encouraged to submit YouTube clips of their covers through Carly Rae Jepsen’s Official Call Me Maybe Fan Video Blog.  (In fact, I’ve even recorded a cover; it’s posted on my SoundCloud page.)  The fact that Jepsen (and her lawyers) did not attempt to enforce her copyright, but rather encouraged these unlicensed reproductions and derivative works, is something more artists should emulate.

All of this shows how much the Internet has disrupted the traditional way that hits are made.  The record labels are no longer the only ones with control, and that is a great thing for artists, fans, and the labels themselves.  Who knows if we would have had the pleasure of this massive hit from the singer who came in third place on Canadian Idol without Justin Bieber tweeting a YouTube video lip-syncing to it?  As I’ve explained before, the Internet is awesome for music.  So more of this, maybe?

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Super PAC App: Disrupting “politics as usual”

by Ali Sternburg on August 24, 2012

The Super PAC App, launched on Wednesday, is like Shazam and SoundHound, but for political ads.  As the site explains, the app uses audio recognition technology to identify “who and how much money is behind the ad, what claims the ad is making, and whether those claims are based on facts.”  The app is free, but it’s currently only available on iPhones.  (Add me to the list of people hoping that it comes to Android soon!  Please?)

People are already familiar with this type of service for discovering music.  It’s great to see similar technology giving citizens the power to become more informed in this election cycle.  This is an example of using an innovation that was developed for, or at least popularized by, a more recreational use, now being used to aid in a very fundamentally important use —citizen engagement and participation in politics.  Another example is the amazing research being done with touchless technology developed for Kinect for Xbox 360, now being adopted by heart surgeons(!) to aid in their precision during surgery.

Super PAC App really has the potential to impact voters, and disrupt the way that people consume political advertisements, without necessarily knowing the background, and what’s not being said.  I’m not sure it rises to the level of (ugh) “gamification,” but it does make becoming more informed more fun.  And that is pretty super.

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App.net: Just “IHave50Dollars.com,” or an Opportunity for Rethinking Online Assumptions?

by Ali Sternburg on August 23, 2012

There have been a lot of conversations lately on the Internet about conversations on the Internet.  (Read it again.  That’s not a typo.)  There is much potential for disruption in this space, for intra-organization uses, and wide public media, as well.  (For some inspiration, check out #2 on Paul Graham’s list of “Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas,” which is “Replace Email.”)  Of course, this is not a new initiative.  Even Google couldn’t compete with its own Gmail when it offered Google Wave.  (Remember Wave?  Here’s a short video introducing it.  As its developers explained in another video, they’d “tried to imagine what email would look like if it were invented today.”  Sergey Brin himself announced that Wave would “set a new benchmark for interactivity.”  But as Google’s official blog explained, despite “wins, and numerous loyal fans, Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked,” and so it was shut down about a year later.)  Still, patterns of behavior for users, developers, and investors are not set in stone (or the virtual equivalent), and there will almost certainly be more emerging services than just email and Twitter.  People have different priorities and goals for usage of these services, and another new startup is emerging, along with a broader conversation about online values.

Less than two weeks after his widely-circulated blog post “What Twitter could have been,” veteran developer Dalton Caldwell launched an “audacious proposal” in a subsequent post: a fundraising campaign for a new, ad-free real-time feed service App.net, which was fully funded last week.

Caldwell’s posts raised some interesting points about what people are willing to expect and to accept on the Internet.  He framed the debate between free/open source/noncommercial and free/ad-supported/commercial as a false choice, because they are not the only options:

The responses to my post largely fell into two camps. One group is of the belief that a non-commercial, open source, open standards federation of real-time protocols is the solution. The opposing group has pointed out that these decentralized efforts never work out, and the API-focused service I wish existed is the fevered dream of navel-gazing geeks. No, these people say, we must swallow our bitter ad-supported medicine… it’s the only way.

I think there is another option.

Putting aside my personal belief that there are more than three business models for the Internet, rather than just more than two, I do think this could be an important moment.  It is an encouraging reminder that people will pay for online services, including new disruptive ones.

Another Caldwell post in response to VC Fred Wilson’s “In Defense of Free” post (although I think Wilson’s was superior), showed that Caldwell’s views were largely developed from his experience in the digital music business, running now-shut-down startup imeem.  However, one major distinction is that digital music faces unique problems and barriers, particularly for the costs of paying for licensed music from copyright holders.  I addressed this often-prohibitive phenomenon in a prior post.

The launch of App.net also occurs in the midst of Twitter’s blog post for Developers noting some forthcoming changes to its API, that have caused a lot of controversy, but in my opinion, and as others have pointed out, it should not be that surprising.  (This satirical Twitter feed’s Tweet is closer to how I feel.  And this Tweet by Alexis Ohanian.  And this Tweet by Nick Bilton.)  Companies frequently evolve in this way, and Twitter’s post makes clear that they still want to encourage innovative uses of its API, as long as they comply with guidelines.  Anil Dash wrote up an excellent translation of the announcement to display the new and enduring positives of the shift.

Caldwell’s crowdfunding to avoid advertisements is far from revolutionary.  At the same time as his campaign, another very different site also recently succeeded in raising $500,000 to not have to run ads.  Comic site Penny Arcade successfully completed an interesting Kickstarter with a lot of creative ideas and unique valuable rewards, and ended up funding more than twice its initial goal.

Successes like this are why crowdfunding to many people is synonymous with Kickstarter.  However, there are a lot of other websites that have similar functions, and this FastCompany article lists some alternatives.  Kickstarter seems to be most widely adopted because of its usability, transparency, and efficacy.  Tim O’Reilly commented in February:  “Seems to me that Kickstarter is the most important tech company since Facebook. Maybe more important in the long run.”  People have used it in a variety of interesting ways to fund innovative projects that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise.

When reading Caldwell’s posts and the “Join the Movement” fundraising site, I found myself agreeing with some of his intentions, but I do think the parody site IHave50Dollars.com was a spot-on critique.  Along those lines, App.net is viewed by many as elitist.  The site has shut out communities, albeit inadvertently, who do not have fifty disposable dollars to pay for this service when there is already a free service (Twitter) that is widely adopted.  It is possible that App.net will be adopted by the developer community, for their personal and business uses.  Unlike Medium, the new blogging service I recently covered, App.net is intended to be used more for conversation, and so requires a critical mass of people to actually be posting, instead of just reading.  It will take some time to see how the alpha and beta launches go, but even the conversations around funding, not to mention “the dreaded business model question,” are important for current and future online businesses.  App.net is getting people to rethink assumptions, and that is a success in its own right.

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The FTC As a Threat To Tech Innovation

by Glenn Manishin on August 21, 2012

InnovationIn a post about Twitter several weeks back, we concluded that “[a] threat of government action can be just as debilitating to innovation as premature enforcement intervention into the marketplace.” Although the subject then was vertical integration, the same is true of broader antitrust issues, like mergers, and tech policy issues such as privacy. When the rules are ambiguous, and enforcement discretion allows for a wide range of subjective governmental decisions, uncertainty breeds business timidity because rivals can game the process.

A Wall Street Journal opinion piece by L. Gordon Crovitz on Monday made this same point. Commenting that Google’s proposed acquisition of travel guide publisher Frommer’s could disrupt the travel market even further — and reacting to all-too-typical calls by Google’s competitors for “close” Federal Trade Commission review of the deal — Crovitz wrote:

As a regulatory matter, there is real risk that the current antitrust review by the FTC will block innovation in the search industry. The agency could freeze Google into its historic way of doing business by stopping it from delivering answers directly (removing the consumer benefit) and by banning acquisitions such as Frommer’s…. For the technology companies that are supposed to be the drivers of our economy, this kind of regulatory uncertainty is a growing burden. The response to innovation by one company should be more innovation by others, not competitors calling in lawyers and lobbyists.

The FTC’s Threat to Web Consumers | WSJ.com.

Could not have said it better ourselves!
 

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Is “Medium” Disruptive, or Just Inspired Incremental Innovation?

by Ali Sternburg on August 17, 2012

There has been a lot of buzz around the just-launched publishing platform Medium, from Evan Williams and Biz Stone of Obvious Corporation (which also funded Twitter and other successful startups, including some that aren’t Internet companies).  Medium is a new blogging and publishing platform, for uploading and making collections of text and images.  …At least I think it is?  Evan’s post explains a little more about what Medium is, and what it has the potential to be, but the information is still pretty ambiguous, although inspiringly ambitious.  Plus, the full features of Medium are only gradually being rolled out to users; for now anyone with a Twitter account can read posts and provide feedback.  To me, the design is elegant, minimalist, and unlike anything I’ve ever seen, but GigaOm said “it looks a lot like a mashup of Pinterest and Tumblr” and Gizmodo called it a “Frankensteinish PinTumblReddit.”  (I’ve never used Pinterest, but apparently I’m missing out, if only for the sake of comparing web startups.)  Still, both Evan’s post announcing “Welcome to Medium,” and Biz’s post “Building Medium,” demonstrate a refreshing amount of foresight, combined with hindsight from having launched Blogger in 1999 and Twitter in 2006, plus a healthy dash of contagious optimistic confidence.  They have a lot of details down, including even, believe it or not, a memorable Terms of Service, which is admirably readable, carefully thought-out, explicitly encourages user feedback, doesn’t purport to own users’ intellectual property, and even contains an Interlude.

The two co-founders both wrote posts that acknowledged the innovation of their new service, and the voids it can fill.  It’s unclear yet whether this service will be construed as disruptive, or if it is more of an incremental innovation, building on the development of online communication from their prior sites (like Blogger and Twitter), and other existing platforms and services.

Evan:

When you consider we’ve been publishing on paper for over 500 years and on the Internet for only a couple decades, it’s no surprise we haven’t figured it all out. It’s still early days. . . . It’s easy to forget this given how much pointless and destructive media is in the world. But there’s also more great stuff than ever before—and we haven’t even scratched the surface of what our smart devices and our networks that connect most of the planet might enable.

Biz:

There is so much room for improvement and innovation in the publishing space right now because it’s operating on outdated legacy concepts. Everything from the way we consume content to how that content is created needs re-imagining.

As they both make clear, the Internet is still so new, and social norms are capable of major or minor disruption, just as business models are.  This new communication platform could be the future of publishing and blogging, but even if it isn’t, it’s getting a lot of people to care and participate in this new service, and hopefully making competitors rethink a lot of their outdated assumptions.  So, is Medium disruptive?  I think it’s too soon to tell.  I know I’m pretty excited about it.

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You Wouldn’t Download a Car, Would You?

by Matt Schruers on August 16, 2012

We’re overdue to talk about 3D printing.  If you know what I’m talking about, you can skip the next four paragraphs.  If not, read on.

At some point in the not-too-distant future this post will be an anachronism, like a N.Y. Times article from the late 80s waxing on about that whole ‘computer mail’ thing.  (“…and then the message you wrote on your computer appears on their screen!”)  In the 1980s, the article was prescient, and yet in that moment we might have read that article and thought, ‘why do I need a computer to send mail when I have the Postal Service?’  This is another one of those moments.

The term ‘3D printing’ refers to “additive manufacturing” – depositing successive layers of a substance in order to produce an object.  This is distinct from “subtractive manufacturing,” in which you start with a block of something and cut it down to your desired shape.  Online businesses have already been milling and laser-cutting to fit user-uploaded CAD (computer-aided design) specifications for years, and technically that isn’t the “additive” process associated with 3D printing.

Given the rate of innovation in manufacturing, we’re not far from widely available consumer-grade devices into which a non-expert can input CAD files – including specifications that might have been scanned from an existing object – and out pops a manufactured object.  While it will take years before these devices reach the ease of use associated with your desktop inkjet, you can already buy 3D printers on Amazon.

It goes without saying that we won’t refer to “3D” printing forever.  The term will eventually sound like “Information Superhighway.”  CAD-driven object production will simply be “printing” the same way we refer today to “writing” messages when few of us actually put pen to paper to embody our thoughts.  We’ll “print” objects just like we “write” emails.

Possibilities of 3D Printing

The opportunities of 3D printing are nearly boundless.  Because customization is much less costly, unique units are not substantially more expensive, per unit, than a mass-produced object.  The absence of fixed costs presently benefits areas requiring low volume and high customization, such as prototyping and health care applications (including prostheses).  This is only the tip of the iceberg, however.  Consumer-grade devices could allow home production of objects with applications difficult to imagine today.  Just as it once would have been unthinkable to print tickets at home and skip the box office or ticket counter, in the future a manufacturer could send customers the CAD specs for a replacement part, which could be printed on demand at home.  Indeed, the entire product itself might be downloadable, just as software today is increasingly delivered not on a disk but by digital download.

Like all new technologies, 3D printing will be deployed in both amazing and offbeat ways.  YouTube videos change the course of elections. Or feature cats.  We can expect to see a wave of innovation, such as custom medical devices, affordable housing in developing nations, as well as less useful items, like a fetus replica.  Or meat.  (Good luck clearing that printer jam.) … MORE »

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5 Ways Mobile Is Different (And How That Matters)

by Glenn Manishin on August 16, 2012

A few weeks ago, the head of competition for the European Union, Joaquin Almunia, reportedly instructed Google that the search giant must make “sweeping changes” to its business model by extending restrictions the Europeans are insisting upon for Web search into the mobile realm. (See EU Orders Google to Change Mobile Services | Reuters.)

Is he possibly for real? We all know mobile is growing by leaps and bounds, powering political revolutions, connecting the developing world to the new information economy, and disrupting legacy industries. That market dynamism should instead counsel for a restrained approach, delaying government intervention until at least some of the dust settles, because mobile is different. Here’s why — and how that matters. MORE »

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Food Fight: Restaurants Use Political Influence to Hinder Food Truck Competition

by Daniel O'Connor on August 15, 2012

[Part 2 of 2 in a series on food trucks.  Today’s post by Daniel O’Connor is on incumbent brick-and-mortar restaurants using local regulations to fight competition from food trucks in D.C. and across the nation.  Yesterday’s post by Ali Sternburg focused on the advantages of the Internet for food trucks, who can engage with customers and create innovative new business models.]

The gourmet food truck craze is sweeping the nation.  In the process, it is replacing the “roach coach” perception of mobile cuisine with that of gourmet gastronomy on the go (and on the cheap). No frills, good food and paper plates.  In these lean economic times, the market for unadorned culinary concoctions has exploded.  More meat, less maître d’.  Furthermore, the tepid economy isn’t just affecting the demand side of the food truck equation, but also the supply side.  As the AP reports:

Weakness in the economy and high unemployment have encourage [sic] more people to start trucks and carts, Higar says. Some people who start food trucks include people who lost jobs, don’t have prospects for a new one and want more control over their own lives, he says.

This food truck boom is a classic example of disruptive innovation.  Disruptive innovations usually start as low-cost offerings targeting underserved markets and then move up the value chain.  That is exactly what we are seeing with food trucks as they move to challenge “up market” competitors (e.g. The Red Hook Lobster Truck).  However, as is also case with disruptive innovations, the incumbent industries use the political, legal and regulatory processes to push back against them.

That is indeed what is happening:

  • Local restaurants in San Francisco filed a lawsuit against several popular local food trucks claiming “unfair competition.” (Luckily, they lost)
  • In Las Vegas, the city prevents food trucks from operating within a whopping 1320 feet (because 1300 feet is simply too close!) of local restaurants.  A recent proposal to decrease the distance to 150 feet was successfully resisted by local restaurant owners.
  • Pittsburgh has a myriad of complex laws that govern where and how the food trucks can operate, and the laws have become more onerous due to lobbying from local restaurants. (Word of advice to Steel City Politicians, I would not want to explain to local residents why the Pierogi truck can’t operate near them).
  • In Arlington, VA (where I call home), the police currently enforce a rather arbitrary hour long limit for food trucks to remain in the same location.  Furthermore, the local Business Improvement District (BID) has proposed a number of new restrictions, including the ever popular food truck free zones around current brick and mortar restaurants.  Another proposal appears aimed at creating a food truck ghetto (“Dedicate a location for food trucks that is not along the main retail areas”).

Here in DC, local politicians are teeing up food truck regulations of their own.  (As an aside, the DC food truck scene is huge, with at least 137 currently operating within the metro area.) In January 2012, Mayor Vincent Gray proposed regulations issued by the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs (DCRA) which would “update the 30-year-old rules governing street vending – including food trucks – in the District of Columbia.”  That explicit offsetting of the phrase “including food trucks” suggests that that these businesses were intended to be regulated.  There was understandable backlash against these proposed regulations by groups like the DC Food Truck Association (DCFTA), which counts 33 trucks as members.  The DCFTA organized a campaign around these potential amendments.  In particular, the DCFTA was concerned with 3 particular facets of the proposed regulation (which have nothing to do with food safety, and everything about hampering their ability to fairly compete):

  • Limiting Sweets Trucks To 10 Minutes: DCFTA want sweets food trucks to stay as long as savory food trucks.
  • Zoning of Food Trucks: The new regulations that establish “Vending Development Zones.” DCFTA feels these zones could be manipulated by brick-and-mortar restaurants to lock out food trucks from certain areas.  (Similar to the proposed Arlington, VA food truck ghetto, this rule, if implemented, would confine food trucks to “neighborhoods that would make it impossible to run a profitable food truck there.”)
  • Shorter Hours for Food Trucks Than for Restaurants: Food trucks would be required to cease operations at 10 p.m. on weekdays and 1 a.m. on weekends. DCFTA believes “food trucks should be allowed to be open the same hours as restaurants.” MORE »

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Competitive Cuisine: Food Trucks and Online Business Model Innovation

by Ali Sternburg on August 14, 2012

[Part 1 of 2 in a series on food trucks.  Today’s post by Ali Sternburg is on the advantages of the Internet for food trucks, who can engage with customers and create innovative new business models.  Tomorrow’s post by Daniel O’Connor is on incumbent brick-and-mortar restaurants using local regulations to fight competition from food trucks in D.C. and across the nation.]

Most businesses are dependent on Internet tools, even if the industry appears to be primarily offline.  According to the 2011 McKinsey Global Institute report entitled “Internet matters: The Net’s sweeping impact on growth, jobs, and prosperity,” three-fourths of the benefits and “economic value created by the Internet falls outside of the technology sector . . . in more traditional industries.”  While that number may seem high at first, this makes intuitive sense.  The Internet is filling in the gaps and enabling new business models, particularly for small businesses.  The Internet allows for faster communication, by email and social media, and has transformed the way that businesses can engage with their customers and the public at large.  Furthermore, innovation in payment processing has allowed mobile vendors to accept credit cards and streamline financial transactions the same way that brick-and-mortar competitors do.  As the McKinsey study makes clear, the biggest beneficiary of the innovating Internet ecosystem is traditional businesses, which can embrace new technology to create new, innovative ways to make money.  For an excellent primer on companies figuring out when and how to evolve their methods of doing business, check out the Harvard Business Review article “Reinventing Your Business Model.”

The success of most food trucks, for example, is dependent on a healthy online presence—Twitter feeds and other Internet-powered social media.  Where the mobility of food trucks once meant they had a hard time maintaining a consistent customer base, social media—particularly Twitter—has changed that.  Using social media, truck operators can develop a meaningful connection with repeat customers, establish a brand, and answer questions about the soup-of-the-day.  Additionally, the proliferation of smartphones enables customers to follow real-time feeds and use GPS to search for trucks near their location.  These online services are available to traditional restaurants as well, but food trucks have a distinct need to be immediately accessible and maintain customer contact, because they are uniquely able to travel to where the demand is.

Customers like the experience, convenience, variety, and novelty of buying food from a truck.  There are fewer frills, and the price of food is often lower, both psychologically because tax is presumably built into the price on the menu and tipping is not the convention, and also in actuality because the trucks can charge less since they have fewer costs.  These benefits to the public are precisely why food trucks are disruptive competitors to sit-down establishments and takeout places (and perhaps to the incentive to pack a lunch), and thus why restaurants don’t like food trucks, and feel increasingly threatened by their growing prevalence.  Food trucks are a frequent lunch destination here in D.C., with 137 trucks currently operating, according to FoodTruckFiesta.com, which has an automated daily tracker of the trucks’ locations and Twitter handles.  This resource also lists 18 Retired Food Trucks, 18 Food Trucks Coming Soon, and the “Shame List – Trucks that don’t Tweet” which comprises just 7 trucks, indicative of how pivotal Twitter is to this industry.  (As a comparison, according to the Wall Street Journal, there are currently 38 food trucks in Boston, and 29 in St. Louis.)  The Wall Street Journal ran a story last week on various food truck challenges across the country.  The Journal explained the familiar arguments of food trucks (“Some food-truck operators argue that they shouldn’t be punished for offering an innovative service, especially since many cities already allow restaurants to open up alongside one another.”) and restaurants (“Established restaurants say the influx of food trucks is eating away at their bottom lines.”).  Don’t miss my colleague Daniel O’Connor’s post tomorrow that explores the regulatory push of incumbent food establishments in response to food trucks’ growth, in D.C. and elsewhere.   MORE »

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Google Buys Frommer’s: Blending Strategies and Business Model Competition in the Online Information and Review Industry

by Daniel O'Connor on August 13, 2012

According to a press release, publishing giant John Wiley & Sons has decided to sell its popular travel information brand, Frommer’s, to Google.  This move seemingly complements Google’s recent purchase of Zagat, the popular restaurant rating company (they also rate hotels, nightlife spots, and tourist destinations).

Both Frommer’s and Zagat (founded in 1957 and 1979, respectively) were famous for their guidebooks.  Similarly, both had failed to fully embrace the emergence of the Internet and the corresponding user-generated content (UGC) trend.  Much like Wikipedia displaced the pre-Internet juggernauts of the encyclopedia business (Britannica stopped publishing print editions this year), these iconic information companies saw themselves being pushed from the top of their traditional industry by user-generated competitors like Yelp and TripAdvisor (and to some extent Lonely Planet—which more quickly switched to an Internet-centric business model—and Wikitravel).

In many ways, the Google/Zagat and the Google/Frommer’s mergers may be matches made in heaven.  With Google scrambling to compete with the likes of Yelp and TripAdvisor, the company obviously saw adding the professional “expert” content of Frommer’s and Zagat to its UGC as a way of differentiating itself among its competitors.  And it is not just historical content either.  Google has, at least initially, committed to keeping—and expanding—the professional staff of both Frommer’s and Zagat.

Google’s recent foray into “professional” content will likely revive the now trite “expert” vs. “amateur” content debate (see: the lament of the dying newspaper industry).  And I’m sure people will make the “pendulum is swinging” back from amateur content toward expert content argument (get ready for the Google abandoning UGC storyline).  However, the takeaway is not black and white.  Both UGC and expert commentary can complement each other to make a better product.

As an example, see what Google is currently doing with Zagat.  Take my favorite local restaurant Ray’s The Steaks.  Google offers the Zagat Review, that is complemented with a series of user ratings and content (and notice, it is using this to drive more traffic to its Google+ page… so, this might actually be a macro attempt to compete with Facebook).  Compare this with the same restaurant’s Yelp review, which has a much more appealing UGC interface with a much higher number of user reviews (with a robust online community to boot).  However, with Google’s recent purchases, I wouldn’t be surprised if Yelp figured out a way to include its own version of “expert” reviews and commentary to supplement its current user driven experience.

As an article in Wharton Business School’s online journal, Knowledge@Wharton pointed out a few years ago:

The mergers between traditional media companies and user-generated sites are indications of where Internet content is headed, say experts at Wharton. Despite hand wringing over professional and amateur content, the reality is that consumers will use and appreciate both.

“Pitting amateur and professional content against each other makes a good storyline, but it’s misleading to see them as fundamentally opposed,” says [Kevin] Werbach. “User-generated content will never match The New York Times for the overall quality of coverage of the Iraq war, for example, but reading Iraqi blogs, or political blogs about the war, provides some perspectives you won’t get from any newspaper.” And, he adds, “There’s no way a traditional encyclopedia will ever match the coverage of Wikipedia, because there are so many more contributors. On the other hand, while the quality of most Wikipedia entries is surprisingly good, there are times you want the certainty of a reference work that is professionally edited and vetted, or a smaller set of resources that have been pre-selected by experts.”

[Kendall] Whitehouse agrees, and sees a hybrid approach emerging that embraces both professional and amateur content. Professional content on the web often has a user-generated component to it, whether it’s a complementary blog or a user discussion forum. “The big challenge is the economic problem. What funded the traditional content model is falling apart,” says Whitehouse. “Ideally, I see Internet content being a blend of professional and amateur content, but how do we develop an economic model that supports both?”

Offering both “expert” and “amateur” content—and finding the right way to blend the two—is a logical direction for the online content industry to move in.  Just because the Internet empowers user-generated content does not mean that “expert” commentary is dead; it’s just not the only game in town.  (Take popular movie review site Metacritic that compares “professional” critic reviews with amateur “user” reviews.)  Perhaps providing an “expert” set of baseline reviews that are complemented by an engaged online community that provides further feedback, criticism and details is the wave of the future.  Perhaps, not.  Either way, users can sort out which approach they like best.

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