You create - they rake it in

Both, this video trailer to the book The Long Tail and today's news that Time magazine has made YOU the person of the year, comment on the growing importance of user-generated content. The spin that the video here offers is of course rather bizarre. Business has changed but it has certainly profitted from "harnessing collective intelligence." There is the unpaid Amazon book reviewer who, for reasons yet to be determined for certain, writes some 10.000 reviews a year thus helping the global readership to make better picks but also massively aiding big business. The always insightful and sharp-tongued Nicholas Carr wrote:

In announcing its Person of the Year yesterday, Time heralded the arrival of "a new digital democracy," in which "you, not we, are transforming the information age." The citizen-journalism crowd welcomed Time's condescension, but argued that the magazine didn't go far enough in abandoning its legacy as a gatekeeper of the news. The fact that "the cover didn’t say 'Us' instead of 'You,'" wrote Dan Gillmor, head of the Center for Citizen Media, "was a vestige of the magazine’s traditional, royal thinking wherein they told us everything they thought we needed to know (and what to think about it)."

With exquisite timing, Google today released its year-end Zeitgeist report, revealing "our collective consciousness" as expressed through our searches. The list of our top-ten news searches of the year provides a delightful preview of what we can expect when those dastardly news editors finally stop filtering the news and let "us" decide what we need to know:

1. paris hilton
2. orlando bloom
3. cancer
4. podcasting
5. hurricane katrina
6. bankruptcy
7. martina hingis
8. autism
9. 2006 nfl draft
10. celebrity big brother 2006