[Search-l] "directory" vs. "search engine"

[Nitin Borwankar]

Jimmy Wales wrote:

>
> On Jun 7, 2007, at 9:28 AM, Nitin Borwankar wrote:
>
>> Working for free and working as an employee are not the only two  
>> revenue
>> models for content creators.
>
>
> Absolutely right!
>
> And I think this contrast between "working for free" and "working as  
> an employee" just entirely
> misses the point.  I don't do anything for free, and I don't do  
> anything for pay.  I just do what I think
> is fun, and sometimes I get paid and sometimes I don't.


With all due respect Jimmy (and a massive amount of respect *is* due, so 
I am not coming from a POV that questions your motives) ....
in the statement above you suggest that you could get paid having fun 
but you may not and you don't care.  I'll buy that.

But your analogy of bowling has an either/or between having fun vs 
getting paid and for the rest of the discussion you have a dichotomy.
So you switched models in between from the possibility of getting paid 
having fun to a model where it's either "fun" - the bowling amateur or 
getting paid - the bowling professional - but the amateur bowler *never* 
gets paid.

Also your analogy ignores the reality that the model I am suggesting 
already works in the blogging area.

There are different kinds of bloggers.

Those who

a) blog for fun (or professional recognition, or wanting to give back, 
or a need to share, or a compulsive need to hear themselves blog ..... 
any number of reasons other than just "fun", but for now let's include 
all of them under "fun") and ignore the business aspect of their content.

b) have "fun" blogging AND are self employed due to ad-revenue (and 
possibly premium subscription revenue) from blogging

c) are employees and blog as a part of their job - e.g Sun employees who 
blog.


This self-employment model of b) works for blog content creation - those 
blogs that are producing valuable content get read, get page views, get 
ad-revenue + subsc revenue, get paid.  Isn't it the dream to get paid to 
have fun?    If this model works for blog content creation it's only a 
matter of time before it works in other forms of online content 
creation. So either we do it or someone else does.

Where's the long tail of search revenue for the content provider?  
That's the question in a nutshell.  Currently it's in blog content.
Can we create a similar model for vertical search content?

Some people want to do it purely for fun, some people purely for money 
and *some people want to make money having fun*.
I am genuinely puzzled why we would not want to actively enable making a 
living having fun when we truly have an opportunity to do that.

I don't disagree that a vast number of people want to provide valuable 
content for free - my blog ( tagschema.com - about highly scalable tag 
databases ) makes no money and I did it for "fun".   But  couldn't we 
make it easier for people who *do* want to make money  off content they  
created?


-- 


Nitin Borwankar

http://walruscarpenter.wordpress.com	Of shoes  and ships  and sealing wax  of cabbages and kings
http://greener.com    Find, Learn, Act .... Greener, the search engine for the planet
http://tagschema.com  Implementation of tag database applications

nitin at borwankar.com
510-872-7066