Aggregation Sites Jump the Shark?
In a column published yesterday, Ad Age‘s Matthew Creamer opines that Web 3.0 is all about news aggregation. Why pay a writer to produce original content when you can “hire a few editors to handpick stuff already kicking around the Internet that will be ranked or graded, perhaps in some slickly designed graph,” he wonders.
Creamer has a point and others would seem to agree. Newser.com’s a year old and Tina Brown‘s on the bandwagon, too. The Huff Po‘s rumored to be worth $200 million, partially on the strength of its value as a newsgathering hub. (Most would dispute this valuation as ridiculously high — and we’d agree — but the number’s still out there.) The value of the Drudge Report varies wildly, but even conservative estimates put it in the “more than we’ll ever make” category.
When the bubble bursts, however, we’ll know who to blame: Peter Gabriel. Today, the former Genesis lead singer (and noted world music promoter) is beta-launching TheFilter.com, a site designed to help users navigate through music recommendations. There’s a “tyranny of too much choice” on the Internet, according to CEO David Maher Roberts and clearly Gabriel’s the man to curate our tastes. Money quote from the LAT article: The singer says he’s “not just a disc jockey, but a life jockey.” Ugh.
Then again, it could be worse; Michael Bolton could be prominently involved.
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