The problem with an for-profit expertise INDUSTRY is this though: Think about the things in your life you actually NEED consultation for, and isn’t easily available through an ultra-conveniently accessed source like friends or wiki-ish resources.

If you think about it you actually do tag your friends with metadata associated with them. For example: you might think of me and say “Hmm… Ambert knows a lot about swords and guns, so I should call him if I ever have a question on these.” There’s a “threshold” for where the level of competency needed in a field exceeds what is commonly held or ultra-conveniently accessed and requires a paid consultant to proceed in a satisfactory fashion (example is car maintenance. Most of my neighbors can probably change their own oil and they could show me for free in their spare time, but in the rare case I explode my engine, this exceeds that threshold and I’d have to buy a consultant – a highly trained technician – to rebuild the entire engine) The fact is, in our life we rarely exceed that threshold.

You might say: yes but what about long tail? Surely across the enormity of society there is enough demand distributed to warrant having expertise in every conceivable random service available!

Well, that brings us to my next point. The social collaboration afforded by the internet (through forums, chats) has raised that threshold I spoke of. I point to the threshold being raised by the declining necessity of real estate agents and travel agents, and the change in the tactics of car sales from “sales tactics to fleet sales”. Legal and tax services also face a changing landscape due to expertise being for more readily available, and efficiently available.

Of course a future change in our lifestyle as a culture could definitely warrant a proliferation and expansion of consulting services for every aspect of life, and this could well be a possibility that facilitates the growth of “ebay as a service”.

Now let’s say I need REALLY skilled labor – to pay $50-$200 an hour to design a database or build me a VOIP network in my SMB. Things like http://www.guru.com/index.aspx exist for freelance experts, and sites like these have been well known and thrived for quite some years now.

Do I think there’s a huge potential for social networking to aggregate practically needed skills and knowledge? Definitely. But can I see this being an INDUSTRY? No.