On Wed, Oct 22, 2008 at 6:36 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?section_id=556&doc_id=166342...
"So how will today's brutal economic climate change the Web 2.0 "free" economy? It will result in the rise of online media businesses that reward their contributors with cash; it will mean the success of Knol over Wikipedia, Mahalo over Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), TheAtlantic.com over the HuffingtonPost.com, iTunes over MySpace, Hulu over YouTube Inc. , Playboy.com over Voyeurweb.com, TechCrunch over the blogosphere, CNN's professional journalism over CNN's iReporter citizen-journalism... The hungry and cold unemployed masses aren't going to continue giving away their intellectual labor on the Internet in the speculative hope that they might get some "back end" revenue. "Free" doesn't fill anyone's belly; it doesn't warm anyone up. "
If only the economic downturn would eliminate the market for Andrew Keen.
Honestly, I have a policy of simply not reading people that are this blatantly stupid. I mean, it's not even funny how little he understands the internet, and no one with half a brain listens and believes in what he says. He can bark how much he wants about how wikipedia sucks, it's not gonna make it any truer, and it's not going to make anyone use something else.
And seriously, Knol? It's a cesspool, it's useless. Half the articles are promotional, the other halfs are straight copies from wikipedia (copies that don't fulfill all the requirements of the GFDL, btw). Just as a test, I just tried one search on Knol, to compare articles with Wikipedia. I searched "Kentucky". I figured, it has to have an article on Kentucky. It's a US state for cryin' out loud. I was wrong. My search came up nil.
He can crow all he wants. He's wrong, we all know he's wrong, and every important person on the web knows he's wrong. Let's just not care.
--Oskar