Revenge of the Experts

March 10, 2008 | Source: Newsweek

The individual user has been king on the Internet, but the pendulum seems to be swinging back toward edited information vetted by professionals.

Cases in point: Google’s Knol, a Wikipedia-like Web site produced by “authoritative” sources; BigThink.com, a “YouTube for ideas,” with polished video interviews with public intellectuals; and Mahalo, which replaces Google’s popularity-based page rankings with results that the start-up says are based on quality and vetted by real people.