John Gapper on the elitism of the Internet

"While anyone is free to launch a blog, contribute to Wikipedia or publish photographs on Flickr, a relatively small number of activists often dominate proceedings on Web 2.0 sites," comments John Gapper. "Although they are unpaid, they can nonetheless achieve an elite status...These are early days for Web 2.0 sites so it is difficult to predict the degree to which new media will come to look like the old, with small groups of people filtering content for mass audiences. The optimistic view is that technology will make it so easy to switch among filters that gate keepers will have less power. ... Still, the fact that there is an 'A-list' of bloggers who garner a large proportion of internet links and traffic indicates that just because the web is an open medium it is not necessarily an egalitarian one."

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