The 2.0 crowd has the right tools (communities, networks, attention markets, etc), but not the right audiences. Big media still has the audiences, but not the tools.

Consider Digg. Digg, as it is, is useless to me, and to most of the rest of the universe. I don’t care if there’s a video on YouTube about an 87 year old dude having a sex change. Reading Digg is like listening to a coked-up Connie Chung talking to the same 1000 Ajax worshippers…every second of every day.

It’s not that Digg inherently sucks. In fact, I think attention markets are going to be a revolutionary, radical innovation. But, as in many 2.0 models, the content is like the community. Digg’s community of pimply teenagers can give me neither relevance nor depth.

Now, the WSJ’s, WaPo’s, NYT’s, Economist’s audiences could – but they haven’t been given the tools to connect and create.

This begs the bigger, more crucial question: why not?

Umair Haque on audiences in the web 2.0 space (kind of complementary to his ninged/flocked theme)