Thanks for the clarification. Your point’s well taken. Perhaps I placed to much weight on the context of the quote (a rather bubbly piece of not-quite-gets-it psuedo-journalism) rather than the actual quote.

Granted this is a direct quote from a conversation, so all nuance is lost. I latched on to the “spirit” incorrectly. My bad.

Had the article mentioned last.fm instead of del.icio.us, I might have gotten your point more clearly. Don’t get me wrong. I love del.icio.us, but I’m less certain about the value I leave in my wake when I tag something there. It’s an incredibly handy tool, but for the most part I (and most other people I talk to) use it as a personal bookmark assistant. Very rarely tapping into the potential value of public tagging. Sometimes I poke around and look at other stuff people who’ve tagged the same links as I have tagged, but I can count on one hand number of interesting things I’ve found through those means.

Thanks for weighing in on the conversation.

The point is that their natural traversal through systems can create implicit value that can be mined and reflected back to subsequent users. For instance, consider last.fm. It’s a fantastic service that depends on folks giving them the right to effectively spy on their listening habits. In aggregate, things like recommendations and discovery are enabled. This is what I mean by creating value in one’s “wake.” Nobody listens to music because they wanna make last.fm a better service. But through opting in, goodness happens.

Participatory media’s effect on journalism will be profound.

What I meant to say is what you said more elegantly — the three act drama’s not going away. I find it interesting that so many big private equity players realize this as well.

OTOH, don’t be too quick to dismiss the consumer generated media. It’s not a case of consumer generated being the alternative to “professional” media production, it’s both at the same time. Some people will consume less “pro” media in favour of consumer generated “genuine” content, but professional production doesn’t go away.

Cheers Philip