Knowledge for Hire

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.