One of the central concepts of Web 2.0 or the Open Source/Consumer Generated Media phenomenon is the idea of harnessing collective intelligence. The theory goes that this takes advantage of the power of network effects and therefore produces exponential increases in value creation. On the face of it this seems like sound logic. It certainly offers the possibility of an elegant solution to the problems created by increased specialization. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) or one-to-one marketing tried to be this solution, but cratered under the weight of its own complexity. Too often, CRM came to mean forklift installations and disruptive, large-scale enterprise-wide implementations. Many-to-many marketing offers the alternative of having micro-segments of participant/users do the heavy lift, with the result that you can achieve greater market impacts with fewer marketing resources (people and money).
But of course you could take the position of Barry Diller at the Web 2.0 conference earlier this month:
“An audience of 8 to 12 people might be interested in someone's individual expression, but the process of people with talent and expertise making entertainment products won't be displaced by 18-year-olds making videos, except maybe on 'Funniest Home Videos’.”
Having looked at the current creative product coming out of
The first answer is, in some categories it doesn’t matter. As Mr. Diller said, some independent creative product will always find audiences, large and small. And this kind of creative talent (podcaster, independent filmmaker, performance artist etc.) isn’t burdened by the requirements of a large corporate infrastructure and isn’t necessarily creating with EBITDA or audience reach in mind.
For other categories this question becomes more complex. Journalism has struggled with this issue since the first incident of newspaper advertising. Despite the requirement for a Chinese Wall between ad sales and editorial, there are instances of transgressions. And lately journalists have been their own worst enemies. The recent histories of Dan Rather and Judith Miller offer abundant evidence that seasoned, professional journalists aren’t without flaws and aren’t immune to undue influences. Recent studies show that people are increasingly skeptical of professional journalism, and are as likely to embrace and believe in consumer generated media (particularly among younger segments of the population). Consumer generated media is the new voice in the sometimes better or worse dialogue of our free press.
In other categories, due to the level of sophistication and expertise required to make sound judgments, the need for authoritative sources is critical. Health and financial management are two such examples. In this case the time-honored tradition of peer review allows participation by a broader group, while providing some expert guidance. The technique of peer review is often used in the academic world, even for complex subjects with multiple (valid) points-of-view such as current events in the Middle East. And of course Wikipedia has become the new resource of choice for journalists, researchers, academics and school kids, relying on the same sort of peer-review collaborative editorial process.
The truth is that there are both strengths and weaknesses to the concept of consumer generated media. As a CEO or marketing executive you need to evaluate these factors and determine the best options for integrating it into your product/service development, communications and distribution plans. The technology innovators who coined the Web 2.0/Open Source concept did it for the software industry. For software this is a fairly straightforward process. If a piece of software doesn’t work very well it’s voted off the open source island pretty quickly and replaced with a superior version. For the rest of us it’s not always that simple. But given the potential, it’s worth figuring out.
Now, about that question of promoting stupidity … can we do something about America’s Funniest Home Videos?
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