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February 11, 2007

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Can you tell us more about why you think exchanging powerful corporate curators of content for powerful non-corporate ones would be considered two steps back?

Here's the thing: if you drink the UGC kool-aid, you believe that there's actually a meritocracy in place. In the Attention Economy, those users that are most congruent with the things people want to read are the ones that end up on the pulpit.

I don't believe that's entirely true -- or that it remains true over time -- for two reasons: first, as the disruption turns into the New Established Order, the free speech of the freelance curators becomes more entrained with "behind the scenes" influences -- and that really *is* a step back.

Second, there's two kinds of communities in the new Social Intertube -- the Big Spotlight community (BoingBoing, Digg, Slashdot), where a small group does direct the attention of a large group. But there's also the small community of people, numbered in the tens. There are lots and lots of those groups as well, and the weight that drives THOSE groups really is more distributed.

Anyhow, I do completely agree with you that as time goes by, the "ownership" of the speech becomes more and more important, and users are becoming more sophisticated at sussing out the difference between corporate-sponsored and private speech. If people stay vigilant about that, then we won't have to take both steps back, I hope :)

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