Comments on: Crowds vs. Gatekeepers: Not a Zero-Sum Game

By: Mike Cane

Mike Cane — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 16:59:32 +0000

>>>**cough**YOUTUBE**cough***

Well what does every wanker with a phonecam have to do with *publishing*? You think cat vids and happy-slappers ever had a *market* for that?! And I'd counterargue that the quality of YouTube is *higher* than TV — *if you know where to look*. Those TED videos, for one, which would never appear on TV at all (not even on one of the niche 1,000 channels out there). And when Veoh was around, there were people doing actual *serials* and they were more interesting than most of the crap on “professional” TV. (Those people went to Veoh because it supported longer videos, had better discovery, and I think also had revenue-sharing before YouTube.)

Techmeme is curated. Do you see the sorry state of the crap they highlight there?

By: The Future of Publishing is Bright | Digital Book World

The Future of Publishing is Bright | Digital Book World — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 17:03:07 +0000

[...] don’t love zero-sum scenarios, [...]

By: Kimberly Davis

Kimberly Davis — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 18:42:08 +0000

Bravo! Great post. Much of what rises to the top on the Internet is pretty mindless. However, the web is also a great way for intelligent niche artists to find an audience. Think Lily Allen, in music. Of course, behind Lily Allen is a great producer with a vision. This is the kind of thing I'd like to see more of in book publishing.

By: Judith

Judith — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 01:16:11 +0000

Power to the internet. YaY! Can't wait, can't wait, can't wait… For what? You'll hear/see sooner than later…

By: Guy LeCharles Gonzalez

Guy LeCharles Gonzalez — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 19:51:34 +0000

Exactly! It's simply trading one set of gatekeepers for another; there's nothing wrong with curators, but the pretense of democracy is a lot more buzzworthy.

By: Mike Cane

Mike Cane — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 18:05:34 +0000

Digg, reddit, and every other thing like them turn into shit because the trend to all such sites are to become cultish. A hierarchy of gatekeepers eventually emerges from the sludge — those who post the most. Those who aren't in are out — and that includes most of the people who read such sites. This is why when I read of new “eBook” ventures proclaiming they will have a “community component,” I cringe. They don't know what they're setting themselves up for down the road. Keeping a community *flat* is the answer, but no one has yet shown me a solution that works.

By: glecharles

glecharles — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 03:54:12 +0000

Yes! All content is not created equal, nor is it curated or contextualized equally, but there's a cottage industry on the conference circuit for those willing to pretend otherwise. As your post earlier today noted (http://bit.ly/N78Fo), the tools are available for anyone to use, but using them doesn't automagically make someone a writer, publisher or marketer. "Gatekeeper" is a dirty word right now, but good curators add value while empowering the crowds, too.

By: glecharles

glecharles — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 01:54:12 +0000

By: edwardboches

edwardboches — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 13:59:51 +0000

Crowds don't lead to better ideas or content unless the crowds are made up of people good at ideas and content. Just like learning to type won't make you Stephen King and owning a movie camera won't turn you into Martin Scorcese. There's a lot of bad content no doubt. But the best movies or tv shows still have directors. The best ad agencies have creative directors. Great magazines and publishers have editors. It's for a reason. They're not all created equal. Just as it's true not everyone with a video camera can create good content, not everyone with a gatekeeper job is a good judge. A lot this is subjective, just look at the views or stars on some of the crap on YouTube. Right now we're still in an age when all of this is new. The ability to create, share, comment on is only a few years old. A lot of people just want to hear themselves talk and others simply want to connect. None of the new technology or sm platforms will make any content better, it will only give us more options to create it, distribute it and find it. We will still need the “idea generators” to come up with it, and we will still need good taste to evaluate it.

By: snidey-mc-snider-stein

snidey-mc-snider-stein — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 17:23:21 +0000

lesson? if you pedal crap as gold for long enough, someone will buy it?

mar
who read the reply he's replying to before the article itself and now realizes that his normally snide reply is even more cantankerous than originally intended which is to say that his reply is now cantankerous versus snide.