Surfing for something that isn't there yet....

Jeremy is always coming up with provocative notions about the way the evolving web is changing things ... and fast. I hope he is right that we are on the verge of a new publishing paradigm that falls largely out of control of the "big guys". He's lucky and wins either way with one of the top tech blogs in the world OR as a Yahoo guy.

It's certainly true that we are not yet close to "great" information environments for various groups of humans.

Forums were becoming great as niche interest sites, but many have become crap now that the smart people all went off blogging.

Blogs have helped to allow more of a focus on good thinkers thinking, but even good blogging is one sided, often superficial and fairly unstructured, and rarely "user centric".

Websites are structured and often info rich but (I certainly include my own sites) working way too hard to please Google, & Yahoo & revenue sources. Money is definitely trumping quality on the web in a HUGE way, I think far more than most users realize. *Most* websites exist to turn a buck, and even great hobby sites are often co-opted by the profit motive. That's not necessarily bad, but it's certainly makes them less inclined to focus on what a user will NEED vs what a user will BUY.

Where are all the users in all this mess?

Surfing for something that isn't there yet.