Knowledge for Hire

Nicole Davis, AlterNet
May 12, 2000


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   I have a problem with the Web. Unlike the safe, self-referential pages
   of the dictionary, where zenith will lead you to nadir and back again,
   a random search on any of the leading online engines might not take
   you anywhere at all. Case in point: A literary journal whose URL I
   always seem to forget -- the irreverent McSweeny's -- never seems to
   appear when I search for it. Engines like Dogpile and Yahoo
   disappoint, offering up links to an article on Boeing 737s and their
   lingering rudder problems. And when I try Altavista, I'm directed to
   the McSweeny family Web site (a mistake the journal would relish, but
   alas, I don't think there's any affiliation). Ask Jeeves suggests I
   try something different altogether. Convinced I've misspelled my
   query, Jeeves thinks that when I type in, "Where can I find McSweeny's
   online?" I really mean, "Where can I find mute swans?"

   Why do so many of these engines respond with meaningless returns like
   these? While the Web has become overloaded with information, its track
   record for plumbing the depths of that knowledge and surfacing with
   something useful, let alone an exact match, is often as successful as
   a deep sea discovery of Atlantis. It's not Jeeves' fault, or our own;
   rather, Jeeves is just a poor substitute for someone who can actually
   answer questions. But now, after a decade of frustrated searching, a
   cadre of experts has appeared on the Net ready to find whatever
   information we've been looking for.

   They're called Peopleware. Or at least this is what Rob Shavell,
   author of the recent Datamonitor report, "Searching for the Next
   Killer Internet Application," calls Web sites like Inforocket.com,
   Abuzz.com and Keen.com that promise to connect people with questions
   to people with answers. Based on his analysis, this new "expert" niche
   is expected to garner $6 billion in "direct information exchange" come
   2005 -- all because Peopleware dot-coms can capitalize off users
   looking for an alternative to search engines. "Interestingly," he
   reports, "no one thought of intelligent networks comprised of living,
   breathing people, although advertising and branding have long pointed
   toward replacing search engines with humans."

   Finally, the Web has realized our potential! But I wonder: Can humans
   really take a program's place?

   A sampling of the questions on these sites -- What is your opinion of
   Boy George and Culture Club? How can I get out of debt? Or my personal
   favorite: Why would Kierkegaard hate the Internet? -- shows the range
   of inquiries up for grabs. Matters of taste, concrete financial
   advice, even topics presumably for college term papers are covered,
   and the experts are as varied as the questions.

   On any given site there are support technicians, retired teachers,
   lawyers and college students, among others, who will solve your
   personal conundrum. And though plenty of CPAs, DAs and PhDs are tacked
   onto experts' names, none of these sites verify a person's
   credentials. The minds behind these companies aren't necessarily
   interested in old-economy experts; what they think the Internet needs
   is people who help people. As Inforocket's Vice President of Marketing
   Monica Sanchez put it, "Our whole objective is to communicate that
   everybody has value. Because you've been there, you have done things
   that other people want to know about."

   Apparently, some people are so eager to know where we've been and what
   we've learned, they'll pay money for the information -- or at least
   that's what some of these information sites assume. On Keen.com, for
   instance, you can find the "Keen Speaker" who's right for you, and
   call them on the phone. The only catch is that you must agree to pay
   their per-minute price, which can sometimes be as expensive as a 900
   number (about two dollars a minute). On Inforocket, people designated
   as "answer rockets" are encouraged to bid on queries from "question
   rockets," for a minimum fee of three dollars (though some bids have
   gone as high as $100). Askme.com, on the other hand, expects nothing
   in exchange for tapping into its expert database, and Abuzz.com,
   another free-of-charge site affiliated with the New York Times, is
   more like an information kaffe klatch, with various circles in which
   the curious can chat or pose questions.

   But are any of these experts worth their salt? Intrigued by the
   possibilities, I began asking around.

   "Can someone tell me about the Bay of Pigs invasion?" I asked the
   answer rockets, offering the mandatory three dollar minimum bid. It
   was a frivolous question, but other than a vague notion of an
   attempted coup on Castro's regime, I really didn't have much of a clue
   about the event. More importantly, the idea that I could pay someone
   three dollars to answer something that would take energy to learn
   myself prompted me to ask it -- exactly, I suspect, what
   Inforocket.com wants to hear.

   The promise these sites offer is that access to knowledge -- with the
   help of an expert -- can be effortless. "The Internet, to me, is the
   most convenient thing that could have ever happened," says Sanchez.
   "I've become addicted to being a 'lazy person,' investing my time in
   the things I need to get done, and letting other people do the work
   for me."

   With the advent of information sites, the way the Web "works" for us
   is changing; the "lazy" person who relies on the Internet for shopping
   services and banking online can now rely on the Internet for knowledge
   -- at a price. According to Walter Conner, Askme.com's vice president
   of marketing strategies, this has everything to do with consumers'
   desire for speed and convenience. "Almost all of my purchases are on
   the Web now," says Conner. "I just bought a motorcycle and needed to
   get some parts for it. There's a place two miles from my house. But
   given the hours that I work, I just haven't had a chance to get up
   there. So I ordered parts on the Web from a place in New Jersey
   that'll deliver them to my house in three days."

   It takes an expert at one of these sites even less time, on average,
   to answer your question. "Bootsiemalone," the person I consulted about
   the inflammation in my cat's eye, responded to my question within the
   hour. The two financial experts I had tax questions for got back to me
   within a couple of days. "Dsteasy," the answer rocket I paid to answer
   my Bay of Pigs question, bid on it that same night. And when I asked
   the book circle on Abuzz if anyone knew where to find McSweeny's
   online, "Stacieelyse" got back to me the next day. "This was a tough
   one!" she wrote. "It's mcsweeneys.net." I had left out the third "e"
   in the magazine's name -- something a search engine could not abide.

   Not all of the answers were to my liking, though. "Dsteasy," the
   college student whose bid I accepted to answer my Bay of Pigs
   question, provided a lengthy summary of the event but listed the CD
   Encarta 2000 as a source. When the time came to rate him, which most
   of these sites ask you to do, I decided against the highest rating of
   five stars. Somehow I felt cheated. This was not, as I had come to
   expect, a "personal" description from someone who really "knew" the
   answer. What's more, in one of my desk drawers lies a copy of the
   Encarta 2000 CD. Three dollars later, I wondered: Why didn't I bother
   to use it myself?

   The potential shift from knowledge as something earned, to information
   we pay money to access, is not far from the premise of Jeremy Rifkin's
   new book, "The Age of Access." In it, he predicts that "we will come
   to think of our economic life in terms of access to services and
   experiences and less in terms of ownership of things." Interestingly
   enough, one example he provides is the way Encyclopedia Britannica
   responded to Microsoft's more affordable, accessible Encarta, now the
   world's best-selling encyclopedia. To compete with Microsoft's
   Internet resource, Brittannica began offering its database online, for
   a fee, and now, Rifkin writes, one of the United States' most
   respected reference books "has literally dematerialized into a pure
   service."

   Paying for access to the materials and resources of knowledge is
   nothing new. A set of bound Britannicas runs over one grand; a college
   education could cost a student, or her parents, a hundred times that
   amount. It's when gathering information becomes a service -- with
   nothing except money and answers exchanged -- that it threatens to
   change the way we learn from others.

   Like fast food, the answers on sites like Keen and Inforocket have to
   be good enough, and come fast enough, to merit the cost of
   information. Yet while providing answers seems to be an easy
   transaction, measuring customer satisfaction may prove to be more
   difficult. The sites I looked at do have some safeguards in place; on
   all of them, even on free sites like Abuzz, experts are graded upon
   their responses -- though expert grade inflation has already become a
   problem.

   Keen staffers say their grading system is accurate because paying for
   answers is a method of ensuring quality of service. The more a
   customer is willing to pay for a highly rated expert, the better the
   information will be. "I'll go back to a really old saying," says
   Keen's CEO Karl Jacob. "You get what you pay for. There just isn't a
   model in our world for getting something for free and having it have
   any real value."

   To this, Rifkin would probably respond that the nature of these
   services needs to be examined before "most remaining human activity
   migrates to the commercial realm." Yet the speed, efficiency and
   relative friendliness of online information services seems to run
   counter to Rifkin's moral concerns. For those new to the Web, going to
   Keen and connecting with humans is probably much less intimidating
   than surfing through a maze of sites. These are the same people who do
   not know how to run advanced searches and are frequently frustrated by
   returns. Or who do not know of any other place online where they can
   share information and ideas with others, free of charge. They are
   probably unfamiliar with Usenet -- the global link of message groups
   that has been maintained by people since the Internet's inception.

   Even for the Web savvy -- those who know the tricks of finding
   information online -- interacting with a human may ultimately be more
   useful than posting a message to a newsgroup and hoping for a direct
   response, or searching through documents. In the course of writing
   this article, Peopleware was able to give me something other search
   methods could not: quick, human insights. Abuzz member Astaroth
   agrees: "I wouldn't be surprised if sites like Abuzz gain in
   popularity, because it's a lot easier and more satisfying to interact
   with another human then it is with a search-bot."

   Although customer satisfaction is possible, it remains to be seen
   whether these sites will see profits. Conner believes that Askme's
   creation of communities -- with specific tastes, interests and
   consumer habits -- could prove to be a lucrative resource, as online
   companies will pay for information about people's buying habits. With
   "2,000 categories of people that's expanding daily," Conner predicts
   that Askme "can just keep branching and branching forever. The ability
   [for vendors] to go to these highly targeted audiences is what I think
   the future is and it's a very efficient way to market."

   Askme, which does not ask its customers to pay for information, also
   hopes to generate revenue from advertising and commission schemes in
   which their experts recommend products or serve as consultants to
   customers on commercial sites. None of these schemes have put Askme in
   the red, however. Of all the sites I contacted, only Keen, with its
   more traditional business model, predicts it will be in the black in a
   year. Conner believes that within a few years one or two information
   sites will likely dominate the market, though which sites those are is
   unclear.

   As with all businesses, there has to be a considerable market and need
   for a service in order for it to succeed. And since these sites rely
   upon phone or virtual interactions rather than face-to-face ones,
   people and industries would be phased out. Or -- in Net speak --
   disintermediated. Conner cited the car salesmen as an example of such
   at-risk professions. If people can order their cars online, he asked,
   "Why do I need a local dealership?"

   Curious to see if a car salesperson felt the same way, I called the
   Ford Dealership in Brooklyn, New York and spoke with Mike Bruno. He
   disagreed. "I believe most people want to come in and look at the
   car," he said. "They like to haggle. They like to take a test drive.
   They like to deal with a person."

   As e-commerce expands into the Internet's most essential and (up until
   now) free element -- information exchange -- it remains to be seen how
   much people will like, rely on or be willing to pay for knowledge that
   is for sale. "In the very, very broad sense, people will eventually
   find the most efficient way of communicating with one another," said
   Abuzz General Manager John Capello. So in the same way we decide to
   call a person rather than knock on their door, or e-mail instead of
   picking up the phone, increasingly, we may turn to Peopleware instead
   of other research tools -- including the people around us.

   But I doubt I'll be paying anyone for their thoughts again anytime
   soon. Not when there's such a glut in the market.
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