Roger Cadenhead over at the Workbench wrote up his analysis of one of our Long Bets yesterday that is up for review (thanks to Chris Anderson for sending this in). Cory Doctorow over at BoingBoing also did a nice write up. We here at Long Bets will be making our own analysis of course, but here is a good excerpt of his take on it:
So Winer wins the bet 3-2, but his premise of blog triumphalism is challenged by the fact that on all five stories, a major U.S. media outlet ranks above the leading weblog in Google search. Also, the results for the top story of the year reflect poorly on both sides.
In the five years since the bet was made, a clear winner did emerge, but it was neither blogs nor the Times.
Wikipedia, which was only one year old in 2002, ranks higher today on four of the five news stories: 12th for Chinese exports, fifth for oil prices, first for the Iraq war, fourth for the mortgage crisis and first for the Virginia Tech killings.
Winer predicted a news environment “changed so thoroughly that informed people will look to amateurs they trust for the information they want.” Nisenholtz expected the professional media to remain the authoritative source for “unbiased, accurate, and coherent” information.
Instead, our most trusted source on the biggest news stories of 2007 is a horde of nameless, faceless amateurs who are not required to prove expertise in the subjects they cover.
And I just saw that Winer and Boutin have wrote up their takes on this:
My Long Bet with Martin Nisenholtz
It certainly is fun to speculate, but the decision about who won
belongs exclusively to the Long Now Foundation. They have
to decide who determines what the top stories of 2007 are, and
imho they should consult with search experts to …
Scripting News – http://www.scripting.com/Wikipedia wins, I lose big bet on the news
By Paul Boutin
Google — the company, not the search engine — will call a
winner, and the Long Now Foundation, which holds the
cash in the pot, will decide the issue. I know because I set this
all up in 2001, by talking to Google PR chief David Krane …
serversatoz.com – http://serversatoz.com/
