The success of The Huffington Post and of Lonelygirl15 and the celebrity gossip sites was something of an early sign that even by the end of its first decade, the amateur phase of the web was already coming to an end. Wikipedia reached its peak of 51,000 active editors in 2007, and from that point onward began to shed contributors; by 2013 it would lose more than 20,000, never having expanded beyond its committed core of young men with time on their hands. Across the web, one sensed a general waning of enthusiasm, as if the air were escaping from the balloon.

Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, loc. 965