Saul Hansell talks about how “web 2.0” unbundles content. Talks about how pieces have to justify their economic existence.
Martin Nisenholz of the NYTimes talks about driving people to the package from the pieces as a counter to that.
Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia) talks about how he has a very small number of employees and a larger reach that About.com. Communities can build content that people are interested in and be self-supporting.
Ethan Zuckerman – A lot of the old models haven’t done a particularly good job of covering the developing world. Aggregation of individuals in developing world can enhance the communication from developing world. It is incredibly subversive, blogging happens in countries with closed media but some digital stuff. Suddenly it allows you to reach an international audience. Watching Ethiopia closely- had open media, cracked down. Now online space brings together Ethiopians in the country, Ethiopans in the diaspora, and people interested in Ethiopian issues. Makes linking part of the community which changes the way people write.
Throw out all communally created goods and you wouldn’t miss them(?!), says Nicholas Carr. Individually created goods are the ones that matter. He thinks that Wikipedia is bad because it sucks the air out of commercially produced encyclopedia.
Jimmy Wales comes back saying that their process has become more open. Also points out that german-language encyclopedia has increased sales 30% despite the german-language wikipedia being more popular than the english one.
Nisenholtz talks about how he has different readers on nytimes.com that want different things.
Ethan Zuckerman says that non-professionals have a different view of things.
The whole thing gets derailed into a professionalism-non professionalism debate and some sillyness about the quality of wikipedia pages. Not sure what this has to do with links.
Niesenholtz poses the notion that we’re creating a society where people can’t pay attention because we’ll just skim. Amounts to a “kids these days” argument; pretty much everything he’s said has been controversial via simple and largely inaccurate contrariness.
mindlace 