WebProNews » Netscape

Does Dmoz Still Have a Place in Search?

Chris Crum — Wed, 20 May 2009 07:15:06 +0000

Dmoz.org, also known as the Open Directory Project, is widely considered to be the mother of all directories. Well, that was the case at one time, anyway. Dmoz has dropped significantly in popularity over the years, and is the subject of much criticism by webmasters looking for inclusion. What do you think about Dmoz these days? Is it still valuable? Tell us what you think.

WebProNews publisher and iEntry CEO Rich Ord talked to Dmoz founder Rich Skrenta shortly after its 1998 launch. "Dmoz was originally launched as Gnuhoo which it then quickly changed to NewHoo. It was a directory that was for the people and by the people when it came out, so it was considered to be the answer to Yahoo’s more closed directory," says Ord.

Now many users are taking issue with that "for the people" part, and the numbers reflect it. Looking at Compete data, Dmoz has declined sharply in unique visitors, visits, and page views over the last six or seven years. According to Compete, Dmoz hasn’t had 3 million unique visitors in a month since March 2003, at which point it had over 15 million page views and over 3 and a half million visits. In April of 2009, the numbers read: over a million unique visitors, 10 million page views, and under 2 million visits.

Just over the past year, unique visitors and visits have seen significant decline. Look at the graphs:

Unique visitors

Visits

Looking for Respect

Dmoz is looking for a little "R-E-S-P-E-C-T" as a recent post on the Dmoz Blog puts it. Editor glippitt talks about how Dmoz is still a valuable search tool. "Everybody loves Google, everybody loves Wikipedia – so why doesn’t everybody love Dmoz? Many people might be quick to tear this question apart, but the post raises some thought-provoking points.

Dmoz isn’t about replacing Google or Wikipedia. But this editor claims it has its place alongside them. "There’s all sorts of relevant information to be found on the web, and the broader the topic the more useful Dmoz is," says glippitt. "Use it as one of your search vehicles and you may be surprised how much more efficient and productive your searches become. Just don’t expect it to be the perfect combination…there’s no such thing as a silver bullet in search – not even Google."

But the biggest knock against Dmoz hasn’t really been that it’s not a potentially great resource. The users who bash it typically claim that Dmoz doesn’t give those who submit sites enough respect. "Your site is a black hole. Fix that, and everyone will love Dmoz," says Jim Francis, commenting on the post.

Another knock is that the directory is frequently gamed, and authoritative sites are left out while sites with less than stellar content are there instead. Basically, it’s getting abused in Digg-like fashion. But Dmoz still (at least on the surface) says it puts community first.

"I care about the community and the experience we provide because I think that authoritative, subject matter experts CAN provide an experience on par and in certain circumstances far superior to the algorithmic search," says Grant Belaire, Director – Audience Growth. "And Dmoz is by far the single best example of that on this planet…or any other that I am aware of."

Google and Dmoz

There have been a lot of questions in the past as to just how Google valued Dmoz links (and whether or not they were de-valuing them). Jean Manco, a UK building historian, and a Dmoz editor since 1999 has a very interesting look at the relationship between Google and Dmoz. In the rather lengthy piece (last updated just a few months ago), she says:

In its endless battle against spam, Google needs every weapon it can lay hands on. Recently Google patented a method of including an element of editorial opinion in its algorithm. Dmoz was specifically mentioned.

Yet no one knows better than Google that Dmoz only lists a fraction of the Web. So Google is not about to rely on Dmoz alone for any crucial element of its algorithm. That is a safe bet.

The point is, marketers don’t appear to be looking for Dmoz links at the rate they once were. Many will tell you it’s quite hard to get one anyway. This could be another contributing factor to the decline in interest for Dmoz. Dmoz has been working on a Dmoz 2.0 for sometime, but staff has not responded to my requests for comments about this.

Do you think Dmoz still has a place in search? Share your thoughts.

Goodbye Netscape

WebProNews Staff — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 20:53:17 +0000

Nine years and well over $4 billion later, AOL is dumping Netscape. The company announced today it will no longer support the first web browser many of us ever used.

Tom Drapeau, director of AOL/Netscape development made the announcement at the Netscape blog. He writes, "AOL’s focus on transitioning to an ad-supported web business leaves little room for the size of investment needed to get the Netscape browser to a point many of its fans expect it to be.

"Given AOL’s current business focus and the success the Mozilla Foundation has had in developing critically-acclaimed products, we feel it’s the right time to end development of Netscape branded browsers, hand the reigns fully to Mozilla and encourage Netscape users to adopt Firefox."

Mozilla was formed when AOL acquired Netscape in 1999, and provided the open-source technology behind several versions of Netscape browsers. AOL will continue to release security patches for the latest version until February 1, 2008. After that, Netscape will be filed into Internet history.

Though there will be no support, die-hard Netscape fans will still be able to download old versions of the browser and find related information at the UFAQ and the Netscape Archive. Netscape.com will also continue on as "a general use Internet portal."

Netscape, We Hardly Knew Ye

Jordan McCollum — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 21:53:02 +0000

Netscape is backing off their “social experiment.” On the Netscape blog yesterday, they announced:

Visitors to Netscape.com will see a more traditional news experience very soon. Don’t worry, the social news site isn’t going away! We will keep you updated on where you will be able to find the social news site as we get closer to making the switch.

At first glance, this may seem like a giant step backwards into Web 1.0. However, the blog post claims:

We received some feedback that people really do associate the Netscape brand with providing mainstream news that is editorially controlled. In fact, we specifically heard that our users do have a desire for a social news experience, but simply didn’t expect to find it on Netscape.com.

If this is truly what a majority of their users wanted, it’s a wise decision to yield to them. They haven’t yet revealed the site for their social news (they’re probably off domain shopping as we speak). But they say that:

We, as a company, remain committed to delivering a compelling social news experience for our users. This move is an effort to make both the former portal experience and the social news experience accessible so that you can decide which you prefer–or, even better, that you want to participate in both.

Although it seems like most people disagree with this decision, again, if it’s really what their users want, I think it’s a good idea to separate the two. I think it was a mistake to fragment their brand by trying so many different things at once, but this could be a step in the right direction to fix that.

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BlinkList Closes Eyes For Over 20 Hours

Doug Caverly — Thu, 24 May 2007 20:14:22 +0000

It’s nice to have a popular site, but if the popularity becomes overwhelming, the owner will (temporarily) be left without a site at all. According to a new Royal Pingdom survey, that may be what happened to the people at BlinkList.

The social bookmarking site has experienced exactly 20 hours and eleven minutes of downtime since May 3 of this year – that works out to about a 96 percent “success” rate, which sounds pretty respectable. But, unfortunately for BlinkList, Royal Pingdom also measured its competitors’ downtime, and the results put BlinkList to shame.

Fark, Slashdot, Netscape, and Digg didn’t go down for as much as a single minute. Del.icio.us was down for just five, and Meneame and StumbleUpon trailed with 24 and 33 minutes of downtime, respectively.

The next three social bookmarking sites did notably worse, but still not as poorly as BlinkList. Royal Pingdom measured one hour and 28 minutes of downtime for Reddit, two hours and six minutes for Newsvine, and four hours and 28 minutes for Furl.

And, yes, then there’s BlinkList, with its 20 hours and six minutes. I mean, goodness, by the time we reach a number as high as “20,” we’re supposed to represent it with digits, not numbers. And the outages weren’t just quick blips; Royal Pingdom reports, “The longest individual downtime for the Blinklist website was 4 hours and 46 minutes.”

Royal Pingdom offered “[o]ne possible explanation,” however, which “could be that Blinklist is having scaling issues (a.k.a. growing pains).” For BlinkList’s sake, let’s hope that’s the case, or else the company and site could be in for a shrinking user base.

Blog Post Knocks $4 billion off Apple Market Cap

Brajeshwar Oinam — Thu, 17 May 2007 17:31:08 +0000

A supposedly false-alarm that Apple’s Leopard (their next OS) and their much-talked-gadget-phone iPhone being delayed, caused their stock to nose-dive knocking over $4 billion off their Market Cap. This is indeed a phenomenal development in the Blogosphere – a blog article can have that fundamental effect in the real work and real money.

Let’s zip into a simulation scenario drill in future;

A coveted and dedicated team of hackers hacks into some of these über famous blogs – TechCrunch, GigaOM, Engadget, Boing Boing, et al and took them for just 24 hours (may be even less should do). An organized blog article with striking difference but similar topic is posted across these blogs. Eventually, many diligent Digg, Netscape and Reddit users plasters them all over the heavily trafficked social sites. It then hits the front pages in record time (it will for such stories)! As soon as that happens, it is picked up across other blogs and is blazing hot across the blogosphere.

Even before it hits Digg’s Popular Upcoming Section, the news would have hit the Silicon Valley and other tech-sphere across the globe, it will hit thousands if not millions of blackberries, emails and IMs. Business institutes and other investors does a frantic sell-off, some will hesitate to buy and the price plummets to a formidable negative figure of the Company’s Stock in concern.

By the time, the hacked sites are taken controlled over from the hackers and normalcy restored, error, corrigendum issued; the damage is so well done that the Company’s Stock is in loss of billions of Market Dollar.

What if the hacking was organized by somebody or a team that just sold off millions worth of stock just few hours before the hack? Or what if the next rival Company’s people is involved? If may be remembered that the blog articles in the hack managed to mentioned something about the rival company that send their stock sky-rocking upwards! Alright, remember Le Chiffre’s plan to blow up that newly launched Sky Liner to make profits off the Stock Crash but he ends up loosing it himself – Casino Royale.

Back to Reality;

Early morning yesterday (US Time) around 11:49 AM EST Engadget posted an article claiming that the Apple’s iPhone and Leopard OS launches would be seriously delayed. They based the story on an internal Apple email that was forwarded to them.

Minutes after that article hits the Blogosphere, Apple’s stock started to see a massive selling, from $107.89 to $103.42 within 6 minutes. This knocks off a whooping $4 billion of Apple’s Market Cap. Of course, a lot of people lost a lot of money very quickly. Luckily, it turns out that the email was a hoax. Engadget updated their article to reflect the error. Again within hours, Apple stock recovered slowly but the damage was already done – it ended the day down just $1.40/share, or $1.25 billion in market cap.

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Microsoft Releases Deepfish for Windows Mobile

WebProNews Staff — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 18:55:04 +0000

A prototype browser called Deepfish arrived for the Windows Mobile platform, stirring up opinions that Microsoft may be more than a little concerned about not owning the dominant browser on mobile phones.

Microsoft Releases Deepfish for Windows Mobile

We’ve seen Microsoft suffer from The Fear in the browser wars already. Once upon a time, Netscape dominated the PC browser market. Until Marc Andreessen and company were so close to Bill Gates that they were scraping the UV coating off his glasses, Microsoft had expressed minimal interest in the World Wide Web.

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer owns some 80-plus percent of the browser market now. Netscape is a news sharing website and Andreessen bounces from venture to venture. The Netscape browser exists, but doesn’t come up in conversation except in retrospect these days.

Now it looks like Opera’s turn to face the still-dangerous Borg of Redmond. Microsoft’s Deepfish browser arrived on the company’s on10.net site, as noted by Larry Larsen. Deepfish comes from Microsoft’s Live Labs, where it has been equipped with technology from their Seadragon and PhotoSynth projects.

Unlike most Internet competitors in the mobile space, Microsoft’s deals with mobile makers go straight to the heart of the platform, by becoming the core OS. But just as they faced the prospect of being commoditized by Netscape on the PC, they face a similar challenge from Opera on the mobile.

Probably being a Norway-based company has helped Opera win deals throughout the mobile landscape. They aren’t Microsoft, they aren’t US-based, and they make a very good product. Opera just announced new deals with Toshiba and HTC to make Opera the default browser on the handsets they ship.

Being a default choice is very important. Many people won’t bother to change to something different when it comes to technology, especially if they are of the casual tech user mindset.

For Microsoft, that would represent a utilitarian status for their Windows Mobile OS. If it doesn’t matter what’s underneath the browser, and Opera happens to dominate the mobile field, Microsoft could see manufacturers play serious hardball over licensing Windows Mobile as opposed to Nokia’s Symbian OS.

Isn’t it strange to see Microsoft chasing a smaller upstart again? Almost like déjà vu. Maybe this time, it turns out differently.

Less Sensationalism in Social Media

Solomon Rothman — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 15:33:43 +0000

I submitted an article written in 2005 to Netscape (for those of your outside of the social media world, Netscape a runs “submit and vote on news site” like Digg).

The article was originally entitled “Libraries and Librarians In A Digital Future: Where Do We Fit?.” It discuses how the author believes libraries are losing touch with the fast paced digital world and how that attitude may lead to their demise. It’s a fascinating read, well written and asks many questions about what place if any a library and a librarian will play in future generations. I’ll get back to that story in a moment.

At the time I wrote this, that “old story” received 7 votes in 2 hours after being submitted and I’m hoping it will continue to receive a lot more. If you become a regular user of social media sites you’ll notice that people seem to get too caught up in trying finding the NEWEST possible article with the most shocking headline. In many ways social media has become a bit of a sensationalist race.

That’s also why it has received a lot of criticism and critique. But what if social media evolves away from mostly sensationalism and disposable content to become balanced with content that stands the test of time and remains valuable weeks, months and years after it’s creation. That would be really be something and I predict it’s coming, in fact you could already say it’s already here.

What does this mean for search engine marketing? Sensationalist content and it’s subsequent promotion by search engine marketers to garnish links and traffic will still remain a valuable tactic in the arsenal of methodologies for online success, but as social media matures I expect more value to be in less date sensitive articles.

Produce content that stands the test of time (in addition to disposable bits) and you may continue receiving traffic and links years on into the future. Wouldn’t that be something?

Have something you wrote / created end up being voted up, discussed and digested in a democratic media years after you created it? It’s already here.

I submitted the article about the future of libraries, because I feel it’s content was as relevant and newsworthy as ever. I was very happy to discover it and wanted to share it with all of you for debate. Now if you will, I’d like to diverge into a small rant on that subject. I believe print will be dead sooner then most people think and the fist to go will be the newspapers and date sensitive publications, with books following shortly. If libraries are going to survive they are going to have to find a niche in the world of “get info now.”

I live in LA and just the traffic and time to get to the library makes using online sources many times more efficient and gives me more free time to pursue other things.

I READ A LOT, but I haven’t been to a library in years. If I want a physical book I purchase it over amazon, but I’ll be giving that up as well when portable devices with digital ink become cheaper and more popular.

Post Script: I’m also a member of Digg, but I didn’t submit the libraries article there, because currently there is already an article discussing the same topic (opposing POV) in the top stories.

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About the Author

Solomon Rothman is the CIO for Social Media Systems; an online marketing company that helps its client succeed by providing web development bundled with search marketing. He authors numerous blogs including 3net Search Engine Marketing Blog and loves the ongoing challenges of the online marketing world. Besides technology, Solomon’s other passions including filmmaking & screenwriting.

Blog Business Summit: Jason Calacanis Keynote

Pat McCarthy — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 19:59:45 +0000

Jason Calacanis of Netscape/Weblogs Inc./AOL just kicked off the day at the Blog Business Summit here in lovely and cloudy Seattle.

The topic of the keynote was “Maintaining Authenticity and Integrity Within Commercial Social Media”.

Calacanis does have good experience in this area from being open about much of what was going on at Weblogs Inc. in terms of statistics and operations before their AOL purchase, and he’s defininitely honest and open about much of what’s going on at Netscape. However, his talk wasn’t really much about that, it was more of a history of his experience with blogging mixed in with interesting anecdotes. I have to hand it to Calacanis, he’s not afraid to speak his mind, which is refreshing and interesting to watch. I’ll try and give an overview here.

He led off with a history of blogging, which was actually pretty interesting as I’ve been on the web since 1994 but hadn’t heard who people really credit with “inventing” blogging. Calacanis talked about Justin Hall, a kid who started publishing information about his personal life in 1995 while the web was still very focused on business and education purposes, and Hall started traveling to schools teaching kids how to blog. Apparently there is a movie called Homepage that was made about Hall.

While running Silicon Alley Reporter Calacanis worked with Rafat Ali who started PaidContent.org, and he thought it was no big deal Rafat was working on a blog because he didn’t think it would amount to anything. Then he heard he was pulling in 60k from his blog working a few spare hours a day, and he started to realize there may be something to it. He also was putting together conferences with Xeni Jardin, who was working with BoingBoing and started getting a ton of publicity and success with that. He began to wonder if he was holding people back as a manager because they started to gain success on their own through blogging. That’s when he realized there may be something to it.

He was already working with Brian Alvey, who later became a partner in the company to create Weblogs Inc. They decided at a Knicks game to try and make a blog, and realized that one blog alone wouldn’t be a big business. But what if they made 500 blogs and a platform to run those?

He then started working on it with the idea that each blog should be a subdomain of weblogsinc.com, and set up a lunch with Nick Denton who was already running Gawker Media. He told Nick that he was going to start getting into blogging as a business, and Nick tried to talk him out of it and told him there was no money or future in blogging, it was just a small lifestyle business. He asked Nick to keep it between them. Then shortly thereafter when Calacanis publicly announced Weblogs Inc., Denton posted on his blog that the “Dot-Com Bubble Boy was going to ruin the blogosphere.” Calacanis being a competitive guy, decided he wanted to put the hurt on Denton. He determined his strategy and best way to hurt him was to take his most talented people.

He used more pay and equity in Weblogs Inc. to lure Peter Rojas who was running Gizmodo to run WeblogsInc’s Engadget. This moment led him to realize they needed to brand their blogs individually instead of as a subdomain.

Calacanis learned another lesson when he wanted to hire an editor for WeblogsInc, and Judith Meskill applied for it, and he told her he didn’t really have any magazine qualifications. She pointed out to him that you don’t actually edit bloggers, so as an organized blogger she had the qualifications he needed. She was right.

Jason also knew Mark Cuban from the earlier days of the web, and at a SXSW conference Cuban told Jason he wanted to blog. Jason said they’d set one up for him, so Brian Alvey was a little hesitant, and Jason pointed out that when a billionaire asks for a favor, you do it. So Alvey stayed up all night creating a blog for Cuban. Shortly thereafter, Jason asked Cuban for a little investment, and Cuban agreed right away. Easiest investment Jason had ever received.

He then spoke about starting to talk to AOL and other media companies, and how Nick Denton had also been talking to them, although Denton claimed publicly that he’d never sell Gawker and it wasn’t for sale. He then proceeded with some funny Denton impersonations, but pointed out that he and Denton are now good friends so he feels okay giving him a hard time.

Calcanis wasn’t so sure he wanted to sell to AOL at first because the company was so young, and that he told AOL that they’d want to edit the bloggers, and that just wasn’t okay. He pointed out that the Weblogsinc team worked for the bloggers, not the other way around.

He also pointed out how bloggers are generally misfits and outsiders, and pointed to Robert Scoble in the audience and pointed out that he was about the 59,000th most important employee at Microsoft and was basically a company outsider, then blogging vaulted him to be their #1 communicator. A powerful medium indeed.

Calacanis then went into a tirade that was quite amusing about “A-list blogging” and the complaints from people about how it’s bad for the blogosphere. He said all you have to do is look at the top stories on TechMeme, say something intelligent about the story, link to the other five top bloggers talking about it, and do that for 30 days straight, then you’ll be an A-list blogger. Those that write one post a week, and hope to achieve something, frankly just suck. Then people complain to him that Engadget and Gizmodo “control” the gadget blog world, but if your gadget blog is ranked #67 in gadgets, there’s probably a reason. Your gadget blog sucks.

His point is that it’s the most open, free, and competitive medium there is right now. If you have talent and a little effort, you can make it in the blog world.

This led into complaints about PayPerPost, who he thinks is bad for the blogosphere. He compared blogging to a beautiful Main St. that we’ve all built, and PayPerPost is coming in and pissing on our street. An interesting visual. The point was that they are covert and he believes that authenticity is important for the blogosphere.

This led to calling out Tim Draper, who led a $3 million investment in PayPerPost. He said “I realize a video of this speech will show up on the web right after I’m done, but I don’t care.” He’s called out Draper on his blog as well, and said he hasn’t heard a response about why someone who supports the blogosphere can support PayPerPost.

Next up on Calacanis’ discussion list was to talk about podcasting. He said two years ago he said podcasting wouldn’t work, and again admitted he was wrong. He realized he’s now listening to more “radio” then ever, but he’s not turning on the actual radio, he’s just listening to podcasts. So, he’s announcing today that PodTech.net and GoDaddy will sponsor his new “CalacanisCast” podcast. They’re paying $100,000 in total to sponsor his podcast and the money will be donated to a private school in Brooklyn to put two kids on scholarship who couldn’t afford it.

He then finished by answering some questions about Netscape, PayPerPost, and a few other issues.

Overall, an intersting talk with some funny anecdotes and refreshing honesty.

Update:

Pro PR from Thorney Fallis has a nice post with some pictures and direct quotes.

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Pat is the Director of Business Development at Right Media, the business unit owner for RMX Direct, and the author of the Conversion Rater blog.

One Digger Rejects Netscape, So Far

WebProNews Staff — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 14:35:49 +0000

Jason Calacanis and company definitely ran into a roadblock with one Digg user, who promptly posted their emails to his blog. Calacanis posted his displeasure with Digg user “Tysonhy” in a response to Tyson’s blog entry…

One Digger Rejects Netscape, So Far

…regarding Netscape trying to persuade him to be a paid Netscape story submitter. Tyson republished the emails sent by Calacanis and C.K. Sample III, as well as one from the writer of PBS blog Media Shift.

Said Calacanis:

I respect your right to do it for free, and I’m sure you respect people who might want to get paid.

Also, speaking of respect, printing one-to-one emails and contact info is not very cool. My phone and IM have been going crazy all day.

(We have to point out here that his phone numbers are on his web site, while his IM handle is in the profile linked to his name in the comment, all of which are easily found online.)

Tyson has a few reasons for sticking with Digg, which he detailed in his post. He likes Digg’s design, topics, tools, and its community. Twelve grand a year from Netscape isn’t enough to draw his interest away from that, and real life demands have kept him from posting avidly to Digg these days, anyway.

One commenter likened turning down Netscape to a young star hoops player rejecting both the Lakers and a top 10 NCAA program just to keep playing ball in the park.

That presumes Tyson will never get another offer from another user-contributed news site, ever. While republishing the emails was a breach of unwritten Net etiquette, it probably doesn’t mean the entire Internet has written him off, either.

Paying for contributing sounds like an odd idea now, because outside of revenue-sharing as practiced by sites like Newsvine and Gather, it hasn’t reached a point where payment is the rule rather than the exception.

Tomorrow, who knows? Calacanis may be chuckling at everyone from atop a whole pyramid of paid contributors. Plenty of people would love to be paid something for their avocations; Tyson just isn’t one of them.

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A Modest Netscape Proposal Continues

WebProNews Staff — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 17:17:44 +0000

Jason Calacanis has continued to work at justifying his offer to bring in the top bookmarkers from competing sites like Digg by paying them to do their news posting at the updated Netscape instead.

Calacanis has received a measure of criticism and grief over his offer to pay bookmarkers $1,000 per month if they switch from being active on other sites to being active on Netscape.

“To me, the best bookmarkers are what we call editors or cool hunters in the business–trend spotters. They see patterns before they emerge, they find the cool stuff before other people do. They have ever right to get paid for it,” he posted on his personal blog.

He casts the issue as the Web 2.0 crowd and the media elite fearing the commoditization of such content. Instead of $1 or $2 per word rates, people who have been posting content for the pure enjoyment of doing so would accept a lesser rate to keep doing what they were doing anyway.

The outcry from some quarters that Netscape would be stealing from existing sites does not make a lot of sense. If 12 productive posters leave Digg for Netscape, more would fill the gap.

Plus those posters would have to measure the draw of posting for money with a couple of disadvantages: leaving Digg’s massive audience behind, and accounting for those payments for tax purposes. There is no fear quite like The Fear the IRS can deliver in an official envelope.

So Calacanis’ proposal isn’t a slam-dunk, although he had reported on receiving some interest already. Critics of his proposal don’t seem to get the lowest common denominator: Netscape is a business.

Buying talent by luring it away from other companies has been a part of all types of business for a long time. Google and Microsoft battled over Kai-Fu Lee’s employment for several entertaining months in 2005 when Google lured him away.

This goes on all the time. Complaining about the fellow saying, “I’ll pay you tomorrow to do what you’re doing for free today,” isn’t the way to handle the situation.

Calacanis pointed to a post by Nicholas Carr, who identified what has shifted to make the Netscape proposal an inevitable one:

We weren’t yet able to assign a value – in monetary terms – to what these workers were doing; we weren’t even able to draw distinctions between what they were contributing. We couldn’t see the talent for the crowd. Now, though, the amateurs are being sorted according to their individual skills, calculations as to the monetary value of those skills are starting to be made, and a market appears to be taking shape. As buyers and sellers come into this market, we’ll see whether large-scale social media can in fact survive outside the price system, or whether it’s fated to be subsumed into professional media.

Today, Calacanis has a $1,000 per month offer on the table. From there, future offers and the number of sites making those offers should only go up.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.