According to the definition of the term guru the person in question should be a leader, teacher, mentor and in our case, the web guru, a geek, a techie, a computer specialist or something similar. Of course the field is so wide that it allows for interpretations. You could be a software engineer, a Silicon Valley analyst or an advanced telecommunications student…you name it. What I mean is that somebody created this tag along the way and initially it was applied with some criteria but it has gone wild lately. I don’t have anything against web gurus and their authenticity but I do have my doubts with a great many of them tagged as they are by unqualified sources mostly related to the online marketing world who recently added to the equation and call themselves social media experts. First of all, I would like to say that this is my opinion as a user. I am no geek, no techie and thus I would not be qualified to tag anybody, but as a consumer of data produced by such gurus, I’d like to be informed as to what is good information and what is simply a crap. I would like to trust my sources and sift the media for the valuable gold nuggets in the worthless mud. Is there a way to do that? My point is, if we are all going to participate in the social media and technology experience because it is our job or just for fun we need to tell if the author is qualified. Recently there has been this rush to become an internet broadcaster, a self-made journalist followed by a cohort of adepts and there is this “war” of influential sites and voices trying to attract the most people and be the first ones to proclaim their truth, to give the freshest news on technologies, the current state of the web, the uncertain future or just the very activity in which they are involved, social networking. There are tons of wonderful articles in the staggering amount of information supplied by a gargantuan number of feeds. Does that mean they are already filtered? When veteran journalists do not verify their sources it is their prestige, their job, their newspaper’s name who is in danger. When we try to inform other members in our social networks and we cannot trust the source, what is at stake? I can experience the transformation of the media, I can sense the success of emergent technologies in communications on the web but I still can’t see a way to prevent unreliable sources from getting in the way and try to take their share. Let’s not adulterate the terminology, let’s not overrate the capacity of a certain individual by giving her/him the wrong tag. A marketing guru is not necessarily a social media expert. A skillful blogger does not necessarily become a tech expert. A CEO in a company selling computers is not by default a web guru. Maybe web 3.0 finds a way to cope with filtering data sources by means of semantic and artificial intelligence technologies. Maybe ideas like Nova Spivack‘s, the entrepreneur from Radar Networks, the company behind Twine, help make the transition faster. Here is another example of what this guru has to say: Is The Stream the Next New Metaphor?
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You are so right. Unfortunately, until you are quite well-educated in the ways of the web, it is very difficult to seperate the good from the bad. I’m also not sure what the answer is, but it does make one quite cynical about what you read. I guess the main protection is to read several sources before forming an opinion.
GURU is a reserve name for an expert. Technical and actual experience are playing very important role to be tag as one.