gatekeepers and the web

New York Times Op-Ed contributor Bill Wasik has a nice piece in today's edition about young people making it in creative pursuits and the differences in their paths if they physically move to New York or promote their work online. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/30/opinion/30wasik.html?pagewanred=1&_r=1

Wasik makes comparisons that illustrate the likeness in metropolitan and internet communities - that in each case a perfect storm of creativity, timing and favorable subjectivity must align to provide the "big break" that can propel a career.

He also writes about tratitional gatekeepers in New York City - established people who control access to an audience and, in doing so, "protect young people from an audience, its obsessions and desertions, its adoration and its scorn."

This allowed me to think about the role of gatekeepers or lack thereof on the Web. If you're planning on pushing your work out through websites or blogs, you don't have to worry about gatekeeper as barrier - you don't need anyone's permission. However, you don't have the gatekeeper's insight and connections to leverage either. The public - if you can reach them - decides immediately and directly.

Web gatekeepers can take the form of VCs and angel investors for entrepreneurs trying to introduce web products or publications. These gatekeepers provide consultation and cash to keep an idea and business model moving.

Regardless of what we're trying to sell or where, the people who help us, those who are in the know or have capital and connections, will play in important role. The YouTube overnight success is the rare exception. Though the Web provides opportunity and cheaper access, that opportunity and access is for everyone thus making competition very, very steep. We still need all the help, advice and protection we can get.