Diversity of the Crowd: Part V

The Crowd as Professional Tourist: Truth be told, there wasn't supposed to be a fifth installment in this series, but today I read this article from the Japanese English newspaper, the Daily Yomiuri. Headlined "Crowdsourcing Starts to Crowd Out Professionals," the piece is essentially a profile of Lee Foster, a professional travel writer and photographer with nine books to his credit. Recently Foster has been forced to charge less for his photos. And the situation, for Foster and other travel photographers, is bound to get worse. "'Maybe next year I'll get all of my photos at 3 dollars per photo from iStockphoto,'" one of Foster's primary clients told him.

This interests me on a few levels: First it provides additional evidence of downward price pressure in stock photography. But the piece also features the ways Foster is changing his business model to accomodate for crowdsourcing's affects on travel journalism. For one, he's started running AdSense on his site ("As long as I can attract the consumer directly, I don't need to publish in conventional media to produce income," says Foster). Secondly, and this is a more intriguing gambit, Foster is going vertical. Recognizing that the greatest challenge in crowdsourcing is filtering wheat from chaff, he's creating new services on his site that make it easier for publishers to find specialized content. Smart.

Finally, there are a lot of entrepreneurs betting on crowdsourcing as the next big thing in journalism. I'm skeptical: In general I think old media and new media can, and will, get along just fine. I'm not nearly as optimistic about the future of travel books and magazines. While premier publications like Condé Nast Traveler will continue to flourish, I predict that projects like Wikitravel will pose a serious threat to less specialized publications.

Comments

[Everett]

He shouldn't get travel photos from istockphoto, he should get them from Flickr, it's much easier to find photos of specific places or regions there, and there are a lot more great amateur photographers posting their tourist shots at Flickr than there are semi-pros trying to sell them at istockphoto!

[Shazz]

Just make sure that he respects the Flickr members' various copyright issues. They're not all there for 'free use'. :-)

btw, iStock has a mix of pros, semi-pros and amateurs on their site(s) as does Flickr. Both good options. Oh ya, iStock has a more dependable search function, but I wonder when they'll be applying the Getty search tool?? Soon I hope. Right now search functionality is a weakness of both Flickr and iStock.

If I were a semi-pro or pro photographer, I'd put my marketing cap on and think about what value-add services or goods I could provide (in addition to the photo) that would have a client still buy from me. I have a few ideas ... :-)

[Evan Prodromou]

Hi. My name is Evan Prodromou, and I'm one of the two co-founders of Wikitravel. I wanted to respond to your points about Wikitravel and its effect on the travel book industry.

I'll be the first to say that I think that Wikitravel will have a profound effect on travel guidebooks and other travel publications. I and thousands of other volunteers wouldn't have put in the time and effort on this project if we didn't think it was an important step forward for travel publications.

But I don't think the situation has to be stated in terms of a "threat". We're not in opposition to travel publishers; we're in opposition to their ponderous techniques and publication schedules that give travelers inaccurate and out-of-date information. All of our work is available freely under a liberal Creative Commons license, and we hope that guidebook publishers will start leveraging the fact-checking and information sources of thousands of travellers who work on Wikitravel.

I think that travel writers and travel photographers have a more difficult situation, but I believe that creative freelancers will be able to find a way to continue to promote themselves in a world with freely-available travel guide information. Some ideas: as mentioned, taking existing Wikitravel guides and specializing them for particular markets (GLBT, senior, disabled, parents with children, ...). Exploring areas and subjects not yet covered in Wikitravel on assignment for a publication that uses WT content. Editing WT guides to meet some publisher's production standards.

Looking at other sectors where freely-available work has been a regular part of the business for years gives some clarity on the issue. There have been scares since the dawn of Open Source software about the imminent death of the computer programming profession, while on the ground programmers and system administrators have not just survived, but thrived. Programmers aren't out on the street looking for food; they found ways to turn the availability of Free Software to their advantage.

Smart freelancers and staff writers/photographers alike shouldn't be looking at Wikitravel as a threat, but as an opportunity. There is a wealth of information for them to use, edit, select, modify, filter, improve. I really recommend that writers and photographers who haven't begun working on and with Wikitravel start doing so soon. Travel information professionals who get on the bandwagon today will be ready for a future where Open Source travel information is the norm, not the exception.

[Paul]

One thing that should be noted about the price pressure is that it can help the little guy or amatuer.

For instance, an amatuer web developer probably can't/won't spend hundreds of dollars for images for their personal site. But, they are probably willing (and able) to spend a few bucks.
The same goes for someone starting an ecomm site on the side from their livingroom.

In many ways this helps to increase the oportunities for the little guy.

[carte world of warcraft]

One thing that should be noted about the price pressure is that it can help the little guy or amatuer

[Health News]

I can't believe how much of this I just wasn't aware of. Thank you for bringing more information to this topic for me. I'm truly grateful and really impressed.

[Turbo fire]

Most of the time I can't bring myself to care enough to reply to articles or blog posts on the web but this was actually pretty good, thanks for the effot!