Blogging Killed The Experts
Lately I have been questioning the value of Web 2.0 applications and sites and along those lines I have to question some of the services that many people are offering. For example, the idea of someone blogging for your company site and isn’t an employee seems ridiculous to me. We all know the value in blogging and most of that comes from the knowledge of what you are talking about. But then again, everyone who has a blog is an expert at something right?
And if they are, would you be willing to pay anyone with a blog a specific amount of money for services rendered? What’s the ratio of people who talk about design vs. the people you would actually pay to design a site for you? Or say you were really looking for a Web 2.0 consultant (they have to exist somewhere right?), how many Web 2.0 blogs exist vs. how many of those people would you be willing to pay to help you out with your application?
Many professionals have started blog networks or whatever they are calling them today, but how many of them would you trust to run a true media company? Now maybe that’s an insult to say that these companies aren’t true media companies already, but that’s how it came out in my mind so it must be right because I am an expert at these things since I run a media company myself.
As much as I love the independent web I have to wonder at the job it has done of pushing out the true professionals and experts that I used to read. Is it still possible to really become an expert at anything when you already have 100 people writing on the same topic? Remember when Zeldman, Shea and Bowman were the shit? Now how often do you hear about them? I have no doubt they are happy doing what they do, but where are those professionals now?
Maybe we have become so spread out all over the place that there isn’t a need for experts anymore. With 100 articles daily on design one of them has to be of expert status right? We laugh at newspaper journalists for complaining about how damaging blogs are to their industry, but now I kind of understand where they are coming from. Blogging has made things a bit too easy, similar to how Cliffs’ Notes ruined great literature and analytical thinking.
As great as the web is today, there are some qualities of the past that I miss. I don’t like forgetting how great it is to sit down with a great book and reflecting on it when I am done. I’ve replaced that with browsing the titles in my RSS reader to see if anything is good out there. I don’t like that I’m not sure if the person I am currently reading is really an expert in his field and whether or not his opinion is valid. That isn’t to say that all opinions by bloggers aren’t important, but everyone seems to think that their opinion is always valid.
1,000 monkeys with a 1,000 typewriters was always supposed to be a joke I thought.
Related reading:
You don’t necessarily have to be an expert to write something insightful or useful. And conversely, not everything that an expert writes will be insightful or useful.
Or to use your example of 1000 monkeys: even a monkey can find a gem, and even an expert can fling poo.
By Patrick Fitzgerald on September 7, 2006 2:54 pm
I dunno. Seems to me it’s been like this for a long, long time. The only difference is one of scale.
By Keith on September 7, 2006 4:41 pm
It did? I think it made it easier for people not interested in literature to get past it in school. It certainly didn’t ruin primary source reading as a whole.
If companies only want drive-by design advice and are willing to settle for what might work in the short term, then they deserve the consequences. People and companies that still value truly Good Design™ will not stop seeking out experts and experts should not stop publishing their thoughts.
As with any multi-authored body of information, there’s the rabble and the Quality. Technology should help us find the flavor we are looking for.
By Brad on September 7, 2006 5:51 pm
I find this a very hard post to swallow. As someone who has self-positioned themself as a so called ‘expert’ on several subjects, from Web 2.0 to blogging, to question other people’s credibility to talk about a subject of their choice is hypocritical.
Sometimes the ideas of the many are much better than the opinions of the few. And, as with all those so called ‘web design agencies’ that existed a few years ago - people soon distinguish the mediocre from the quality, and the quality rises to the top.
By Dan on September 7, 2006 7:07 pm
Perhaps what your really missing is the old higher signal to noise ratios. This isn’t to say that there aren’t quality articles being cranked out. Only that with so many “experts” writing, it is hard to find a consistent vision and voice to read. Your doing more wading through the masses of writings and less reading of valuable material (even if it is mostly on the good side of OK). This raises your “transaction costs”, something web 2.0 was supposed to lower for us all.
By bex on September 7, 2006 11:32 pm
Ditto on the RSS comment.
By Andrew Kumar on September 8, 2006 5:52 am
Well, blogging apparently killed something…
9rules is now a “parked free courtesy of go daddy” page
Businesslogs is a plesk holder page
OreoCeo is a 404 page
In the words of Marvin Gaye — What’s going on?
By Mark on September 8, 2006 6:48 am
Hmm… running a media company kind of requires you have the domain, you know?
By Montoya on September 8, 2006 9:43 am
Nah, that’s just silly. We want to be the first company web company without a domain.
By Scrivs on September 8, 2006 10:37 am
[...] Going on yesterday’s post I was thinking is there anything you would pay me $1,000 to do for you or your company? Since it’s Friday you can have a bit of fun with it (I would pay you $1,000 to go to hell) or be completely serious and maybe I will take you up on your offer. [...]
By What Would You Pay Me To Do? » Wisdump on September 8, 2006 1:10 pm
more people writing articles about a topic can be a good thing as well. The bad thing about the Experts, is that usually they have a commercial intention when writing: “here are some tips, which is just the tip of the iceberg…you want to know the rest, buy my book”. There’s also a saying in spanish that says something like ‘power corrupts’…experts suddenly start thinking they are the only ones that are right and everything they say it’s truth…and that corrupts them.
Cool thing about blogging, is that you find nice pearls of wisdom from people that may not be experts, but are passionate about what they do and the topic they blog about. It’s just cool to have as many sources of information as possible….but remember, not everybody is right…that’s why you have to use your brain and start filtering the good from the bad, and stay with the people that, even when they are no experts, give good advice on the topics you’re interested in.
By argonauta on September 8, 2006 2:05 pm
By Jessica Doyle on September 8, 2006 4:57 pm
Beautiful quote Jessica, thanks for sharing.
By Scrivs on September 10, 2006 4:11 pm
Your welcome Scrivs :)
cheers!
By Jessica Doyle on September 12, 2006 2:41 am
[...] Blogging Sep 12 at 7:18 pm by Jessica Doyle -I posted the quote below as a comment over on Wisdump the other day. If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything; it is open to everything. In the beginners mind there are many possibilities; in the experts mind there are few. [...]
By An experts ending is a beginners… at The Blog Herald on September 12, 2006 8:15 pm
I think that it’s very difficult to solve this “problem”. You read one of the most famous “experts†blog and there are a lot of comments. But the topic seems to you not very important and not very useful. But you continue reading all this only because of great deal of comments. But you could even disagree with all this stuff. What’s the reason? May be because there are different experts for different readers. And you should find particular “your†expert regarding the topic which you are interested in. Most people ask different experts.
By Irene Brawn on September 20, 2006 11:21 am