A Million Monkeys

Are thousands of amateurs just as good (or better) than a small number of professionals?
That's the question behind crowdsourcing.
But you could even extend this to other areas of social media -- are the comments and contributions of the general public as (or more) valuable than the comments and contributions of experts? Are you better off connecting with a pro or a bunch of average Joes?

Like most questions (especially those related to marketing), the answer is: It depends.

In some situations, the crowd of amateurs is a much better resource than the professionals. Usually this has something to do with:
a.) The fact that the "professionals" are just amateurs who managed to get themselves a fancy-sounding title.
b.) The topic at hand is a matter of opinion.
c.) The amateurs are extremely enthusiastic.
and/or
d.) The crowd members are well-qualified (vs. anybody who feels like contributing)

Take movie reviews, for instance. I'd much rather hear from other movie-going members of the general public than a journalist or professor or sociologist or "academy".

Or reviews and ideas about favourite hobbies and products. If I like photography, the input I can get from the legions of other photographers out there is at least as valuable as what I might learn from a professional review, an art school, or some other self-proclaimed authority.

But in other situations... Well, all it takes is a glance at the comments on any (really, ANY) YouTube video, most news articles, or countless discussion forums to show just how sketchy the contributions of many people are. Or look at some of the top applications on Facebook, or the inane #hashtagged topics on Twitter, or the sheer volume of juvenile chatter in almost any social network.

It's pretty clear that the biggest problem with addressing the "crowd" is the crowd itself. Makes me wonder how marketers will react in the long term. Will marketers work more on filtering the garbage? (Some would say that this defeats the purpose of an open discussion). Will marketers and users accept all the useless content, but get better at just ignoring it?

There's no doubt in my mind that social media will lose its title of Trendy Tactic of the Moment, but will our collective attention shift to something similar and evolutionary (perhaps classic concepts under a different name, just like word-of-mouth became viral)? Or will there be a radical shift to something very different? Will be people suddenly get tired of belonging to a dozen different "communities", updating their status on a regular basis, and sharing their lives with everybody they've met?