Mob Marketing

The baynote blog alludes to a “sea change” that happened in the early days of web content management. As the story goes, in 1998, content developers spent a lot of time talking to journalists, analysts, and customers about putting web publishing in the hands of internal content experts rather than webmasters infamous for creating a "bottleneck" in the flow of content. The webmasters were kicked aside, but that led to a new bottleneck born of content overload formed from tons of web junk whose utility couldn’t be measured. Baynote says complex search engines, analytics, and profile-based personalization hasn’t fixed the problem, either. The future, says Baynote, lies in turning content development over to the Mob. An outstanding example of this is Fertility Friend, an extraordinarily useful website where staggering amounts of data and research are willingly offered up by the "Mob of Women Trying to Conceive." I don't know what Fertility Friend does with the hundreds of thousands of ovulation charts patiently and generously shared by its users, but you better believe this approach to web content and use sets the standard. The Mob Rules. Thingaboutit.