Newsweek: UGC Pendulum Swings to Info Vetted by Experts

Tried to search blog posts recently in Technorati?  Or find the best videos on YouTube? Or how about just searching Google to answer an important health question?

It's getting more and more difficult as a result of the millions of Web pages, blogs, and videos being posted by millions of Amateurs - the so called crowd.  This is an issue we've been speaking about for more than two years now at OrganizedWisdom so you can bet we were happy to see the most recent issue of Newsweek highlighting the "expert" powered movement online.

The article titled, Revenge of the Experts: The individual user has been king on the Internet, but the pendulum seems to be swinging back toward edited information vetted by professionals, picks up on the fact that user-generated content created by amateurs has flooded the Internet.

In short, the expert is back. The revival comes amid mounting demand for a more reliable, bankable Web. "People are beginning to recognize that the world is too dangerous a place for faulty information," says Charlotte Beal, a consumer strategist for the Minneapolis-based research firm Iconoculture. Beal adds that choice fatigue and fear of bad advice are creating a "perfect storm of demand for expert information."

Perhaps no area of the Web is this issue more important than with health information which is why we've been focused on using the power of experts to curate the best health information.   Not only do people want to know that the health information they read online is credible, but they don't want to have to wade through a haystack to find the best nuggets.

We're not sure that the wisdom of the crowds is even close to peaking, but we couldn't agree more with this quote from Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis that helps end the piece: "Web 3.0 is taking what we've built in Web 2.0—the wisdom of the crowds—and putting an editorial layer on it of truly talented, compensated people to make the product more trusted and refined."

Expect to see the power of human guides, experts, and new service layers become more integrated into many of the most successful user-generated content sites.