Seventy-three people visited this blog yesterday. 73. It doesn't seem like a very big or significant number, certainly not compared to megablogs that have tens of thousands of visitors daily. But considering I started in January with one visitor per day, that's pretty impressive to me. It adds up to more people hearing what I have to say than when I worked as a disk jockey in Clare, Michigan in the mid-1980s. Lets just say more cows listened to the farm reports than farmers.

Is it coming to an end already, though? An article by Newsweek's Tony Dokoupil this week suggests that the cacophony of amateur bloggers and videographers cluttering up the Web 2.0 landscape may be quieted by a new wave of authoritative, expert-driven online information sources.

Fueling all this podium worship is the potential for premium audiences—and advertising revenue. "The more trusted an environment, the more you can charge for it," says Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis, a former AOL executive who was previously involved with several Web start-ups. It's also easier to woo advertisers with the promise of controlled content than with hit-and-miss blog blather. "Nobody wants to advertise next to crap," says Andrew Keen, author of "The Cult of the Amateur," a jeremiad against the ills of the unregulated Web.

It's unquestionably loud out here in the wild Intarweb, with all the blogs and YouTube videos and podcasts on every subject under the sun. Maybe we could use a few people who really know what they're talking about (and don't worry, I'm one of the authoritative experts - it says so on my "Authoritative Expert" certificate). As I've asked before, what happens to real news gathering and reporting when everyone's a blogger?

Much of the desire for "expert" online sources is driven by money. As Calacanis and Keen correctly observe, advertisers want a more defined list of well-trafficked sites in order to get reliable sources of consumer eyeballs. So the rise of sites like Knol and Mahalo - with content edited by professionals with experience in their particular subject - isn't surprising. What's surprising and a bit disheartening is how quick the proponents of these "authoritative" sites are to dismiss the millions of other voices that are now part of the virtual conversation, whether they create one blog post or podcast or video a day, or one a month.

Don't get me wrong here. I prefer to get my news from authoritative sources. I read The New York Times' website daily. I enjoy Mark Halperin's "The Page" political blog on Time.com. I have several other "old media" news feeds in my Google Reader list.

But I also enjoy the free-wheeling and at times scatterbrained approach of the "amateurs." Often a personal blogger will highlight a topic I wouldn't have read about otherwise. Sometimes they have a different point-of-view that I hadn't considered, or which isn't usually covered by the authoritative media. Every now and then a blogger makes me stop long enough to actually think hard about a subject, because it's personal to them in a way that traditional media seldom is. Thinking creates progress, and that's why all the new voices are important.

It's not one or the other, and it's misguided to think all of the amateur voices will go away if faced with more competition from authoritative media sites. We have the tools to easily self-publish our most insightful - and our most banal - opinions. The same tools give professional, expert writers a chance to directly connect, immediately and in a very powerful way, with their audiences. I don't see it as the rise and fall of the amateur, but rather an expansion of an positive, worldwide discussion of issues important to everyone.

Or maybe not everyone, but only 73 people a day.

Photo illustration by Konrad Mostert, Wuppertal, Germany, from sxc.hu

Not all conversations are friendly. Real life conversations can be confrontational, angry, and unpleasant. We often talk with someone who has an opinion different from ours. At the end of the conversation we may have changed each other's minds, or we may come away convinced we never want to talk to that person again.

Virtual conversations are no different, they're just a lot bigger. Anyone can read the conversation and add their own take on the topic by commenting, or they can explain their feelings in a post on their own blog. These conversations are worth having because they put ideas on the virtual table to discuss, and when ideas are being discussed, good things can happen.

An example from today: Mahalo CEO and founder Jason Calacanis wrote a post on his blog on Friday titled "How to save money running a startup (17 really good tips)." Duncan Riley posted a response on TechCrunch shortly thereafter titled "Calacanis fires people who have a life." I'm not going to go in the details of the conversation itself, you can do that by clicking on the links if you haven't already read them.

This real time "virtual conversation" between Calacanis and Riley, made up of their original blog posts, plus many comments on both writers' posts and many other blogs weighing in on the subject, wasn't possible a few years ago. The widespread development and acceptance of social media technology like blogs has created these large-scale conversations. The conversation - and conflict - between the two men was significant enough to make the top of Techmeme's headline list on Friday evening.

I believe it's a positive thing to be able to have a conversation discussing workplace expectations and environment. In the past, someone might have written an article for a magazine on the subject, then people would discuss it around the water cooler or perhaps write a letter to the editor for the next issue (do you read letters to the editor?). Now, however, we have a full-blown debate going on over the pros and cons of what Jason Calacanis believes is the ideal workplace versus what Duncan Riley thinks that workplace should be. It's a bit chaotic, but it does drive a topic to the front of our collective priority list, at least for a short time. In the end, maybe we end up changing each other's minds a little - or we may decide never to read anything either of them writes ever again.

It's an exciting time to be involved with the technologies that make this virtual conversation possible. Employees, customers and prospects are all looking for businesses and organizations that are participating in this upheaval of personal communications. It's time to ask: Am I part of the conversation?

Photo credit: Marcello eM, Poland, sxc.hu