Clearinghouses vs. Blogs

A recent post of mine on Newsvine:

In the beginning of the net, there were individuals building sites that aggregated information. For sake of this article lets call them the "aggregators".  The sites brought value by grouping collected information onto one site that typically focused on one topic. 

Once the big bang of the late 90s occurred we saw the rise of "directories". An attempt to categorize sites based upon the information they contained. Yahoo! in the early form was the prime example. There were some attempts at the creation of search engines, i.e. hotbot, excite, altavista, etc. But the results and the user maturity was not at sufficient level to take over the "directories".

Then came Google.  The dawn of the age of the "searchers". Advanced algorithms that understood rankings based upon links came into play, and the value of search came to the forefront. Now searching returned relevant results, though it may not be exactly what you were looking for. Once again the web continued to grow at a phenomenal rate, and the relevancy of search is diminishing. It is actually considered a prime skill to be able to construct search queries that return relevant results.

Now we have a new animal in town, and in part it is due to the age of collaboration. Wikipedia can be considered the founding example of this new age. An age where people create the relevancy, and the content. In the case of Wikipedia, it is far more efficient to search within the wiki for items like "Paleozoic Period" or "Cumulus Clouds" then it is to use Google. In fact, Google will probably return an entry in Wikipedia. Likewise, for news, I believe Newsvine is a "Clearinghouse" for news information. A centralized repository that focuses on a particular set of informational types. Wikipedia is encyclopedic, Newsvine is newsworthy, what is next?

Because of the vastness of the web, these "clearinghouses" will act as the first source to turn to for informational types. They will rely upon a collaborative environment where everyone is a participant. Topics can be augmented, fed, and commented on by the community. Additionally, the topics themselves can be exposed as a feed enabling other sites to supplement their content. Because these sites are communal, the users themselves will generate reputations, and will be a source of referral for questions. The users, as much as the entries will carry value, and that reputation will be global.

Comments

[photoshop restoration and retouching]

Great amount of information you are shared through this post. Thanks for sharing.

Regards,
restoration

[ThePef]

Dossy, I think you are correct. They are clearinghouses for specific identities or representations of people.

[Dossy Shiobara]

In that line of thinking, "social networking" sites like MySpace are "clearinghouses" for people.