Putting the power of information back in your hands and why that means the end of publishing as we know it

The past week I have been locked away in Beijing’s Random House offices putting the finishing touches on the heartbreaking work of staggering genius known as the Fodor’s Beijing Olympics Guidebook. Rich and fulfilling as that process has been, it led me to ponder whether traditional city guides are long for this world. The production and publishing process for such books is unacceptably slow, especially when attempting to take on a topic as dynamic and subject to change as the city of Beijing: How do you direct Olympic visitors to the city’s best bars when they have yet to open?

Since we live at a time when all research begins with a trip to Wikipedia, it appears only natural that tourists will eventually abandon the Fodor's and Lonely Planets of the world in favor of user-generated content listing sites. These online city guides are free and have significantly more information than their print media counterparts. Michael Davie, the director of sales and marketing at Beijing guide, Localnoodles.com, says that it's the ability to constantly update information that gives sites like Local Noodles a huge advantage over print guides. “A couple months ago, Brown's was the hottest bar in Beijing,” Davie says. “Now it’s closed. In a fast-changing city, we are able to stay on top of things in ways that old media really cannot.”

Local Noodles and its rivals, including our very own cityweekend.com.cn, make use of the collective knowledge of residents to provide accounts of cities more robust than even the mammoth Immersion Guides can offer. Being able to call on thousands of writers with varying areas of expertise is a luxury that no print publisher can afford–evidenced by Lonely Planet neglecting to mention the best piano teachers in the Fengtai district year after year.

Still, there are drawbacks to user-generated city guides that should have Fodor’s throwing their YY1.5/word in my direction for the foreseeable future. “At the moment, I think these sites are better suited for people who live in the cities than they are for tourists,” says City Weekend brand manager, Dan Ouyang. “Until the technology gets better, tourists will feel more comfortable using a guide that they can actually carry around with them.” As phones with access to the Internet become increasingly common, though, these sites will surely become more convenient for travelers. Even now, American city guide, Yelp.com, will send out text messages with helpful venue information upon request. The City Weekend Guanxi service does the same thing in China.

However, it is content, rather than usability, that remains the greatest hurdle for most online city guides. The reason for that is simple. People typically review businesses on user-generated listing sites in one of two situations: to bash a bar or restaurant after a nightmare experience, or to wildly praise a business in which they have a vested interest. Davie claims that Local Noodles has a system to prevent business owners from stacking the listings with biased reviews, but would not elaborate on what that system was. At ww.cityweekend.com.cn and many other sites, no such system is in place at all. “If an owner wanted to add something, they could. Still, I think that the majority of reviewers just want to share their experiences, which balances it all out,” Ouyang says.

This raises a final issue, which I call the “yearbook committee conundrum.” Look back at your own high school yearbook and check whose pictures appear most often. I guarantee you it’s not the best and brightest or most popular. It’s the people on the yearbook committee: people who had time and inclination to collect senior quotes and take pictures of the debate team.

I fear that many “unbiased“ online reviewers are cut from this same yearbook committee cloth. You have to wonder whether you really want your information on the best of Beijing and Shanghai coming from people who, without malice or financial incentive, would sit for hours in front of their computer writing reviews of KFC and Starbucks. Undeniably, there is valuable information hidden in the reviews, but finding it often requires readers to sift through unintelligible ramblings (“Mix is not bad place when you would like to enjoy yourself in the night,” “Fed-up with the overestimated croissant?”, “Whenever I go to [no name bar] I see cats”). Ouyang believes it’s just a matter of time before content improves. “I think that all of these sites will get better when people start treating review writing like they do writing a blog.”

She is almost certainly right. But, until it happens, the only time I will sit for hours in front of my computer is to watch Chris Crocker defend Britney Spears on Youtube!

Our Blogger columnist, Jonathan Haagen, writes for the Economist Intelligence Unit, the Asia Wall Street Journal and has published a book.