peterme just landed a job as creative director at epinions, which makes me think about the epinions business model and sociology more (are sociologists studying this stuff? They should).
I’m comparing a book reviewer who works at a newspaper to a book reviewer at epinions. Let’s see if I can do a table freehand…
| newspaper | epinions |
|---|---|
| Hired by editor, subjective but with expertise in field of journalism | Self-hired and “promoted” by the masses who are (as a group) objective but with varying degrees of expertise |
| Reviewer may accept and review feedback, but the editor/publisher is the ultimate judge of quality | Reviewer (and all the reviews back through time) is automatically ranked using direct reader feedback |
| Newspaper can only employ a limited number of reviewers | Epinions’ review collection only limited by disk space |
The “…and all the reviews back through time…” note is particularly interesting, because any current ranking is cumulative – mixing the rankings over time and combining the changing attitudes and tastes of the public.
As someone with journalism experience (and a lover of the Internet) I like both models very much. I’ll continue to give much weight to what I read in the New York Times and, when I can’t find something there, I’ll turn to epinions as more of a research option.