If you build it, will they come?

From Dan: A Letter to the Bayosphere Community | Bayosphere

“I learned some things last year, about media, about citizens, about myself. Although citizen media, broadly defined, was taking the world by storm, the experiment with Bayosphere didn’t turn out the way I had hoped. Many fewer citizens participated, they were less interested in collaborating with one another, and the response to our initiatives was underwhelming. I would do things differently if I was starting over. …

“Bayosphere attracted quite a bit of traffic, and some heartening effort on the part of some citizen journalists. I’m grateful to them for trying. But as is obvious to anyone who’s paid attention, the site didn’t take off—in large part, no question about it, because of my own miscues and shortcomings. My friend Esther Dyson says, wisely, ‘Always make new mistakes.’ Did I ever. But I learned from them, and from what did work.”