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Tyler points to an article about Web Success demand media, which runs sites like eHow.com. Demand media has 13,000 freelance writers on at its disposal who write short articles on what a computer algorithm tells you to write about.
I actually noticed the rise of this model about five years ago. From the inception of the web, one of the skills I offered to amaze friends and in one case actually gain employment was finding information quickly on the web. In seconds I could extract useful information from Google or at the time, Yahoo.
The trick is that most people were tempted to “ask the web.” That is search for something like “what is electrophoresis.” In the days before Wikipedia lots of people felt like this should work, but it never did. They were pointed to tons of message boards with people talking about electrophoresis, but never really explaining it.
In this simple example, the trick would be to type something like “glossary electrophoresis” or even in full quotes “electrophoresis is similar” As I would tell people – don’t think like someone asking your question. Think like someone answering your question. What phrasing would the answerer use? Search for that – typically in full quotes.
Now here comes the fun part. The advantage of this skill collapsed in the last five years or so. My wife was able to find quickly answers by – shocker of shockers – asking the web. This was the very technique I had admonished her for doing years before. Yet, it was working like gangbusters.
Now I see, that I was brought down in part by Demand Media.
As I side note this is an example of the web spreading out beyond simply being the playground of infovores like myself, but into a realm that can help people caulk a window and other everyday skills.
After reading through the Modeled Behavior Twitter stream and playing around with Google’s new Ngram database (and the Google Body Browser), I had an epiphany, which I immediately tweeted:
Here’s an interesting comparison, but I defy you to counter it: Google (Labs) is the modern-day Bell Labs…
For anyone who would like to read an interesting, if not rather rosy view of Bell Labs in the heyday of its operations, check out the book The Rape of Ma Bell, by Constantine Raymond Kraus and Alfred W. Duerig.
Bell Labs was the research and development arm of the AT&T conglomerate. It subsequently became Lucent Technologies, and then was integrated into the Alcatel-Lucent conglomerate. Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia:
At its peak, Bell Laboratories was the premier facility of its type, developing a wide range of revolutionary technologies, including radio astronomy, the transistor, the laser, information theory, the UNIX operating system, the C programming language and the C++ programming language. Seven Nobel Prizes have been awarded for work completed at Bell Laboratories.
The theme of a productive arm of an organization funding wild research has even transcended the physical universe into popular narratives of late. In Avatar, Giovannia Ribisi’s character, in a tussle with Sigourney Weaver’s character, reveals that it is their revenue stream that keeps her research functioning. Similarly, in GI Joe, Christopher Eccleston’s character informs Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s character that once they conquer the world, he can perform all the research he wishes.* Not to mention, the famous conspiracy theories surrounding Nikola Tesla involve the same sort of relationship.
Web 2.0 companies are particularly interested in this sort of symbiotic relationship between profit-generating arms, and public goods research. Was AT&T a glimpse into the future? Will we see more of this?
*Forgive me for not remembering the characters’ names!
