Professional content providers beware: you are being replaced by amateurs at an alarming rate. At least that’s the opinion of Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of the world’s largest user generated encyclopedia Wikipedia (some also refer to him as God King).

”People want high quality content. Wikipedia is turning upside down this idea that good quality content needs to be provided by professionals and that all the other stuff on the Internet is just crap,” the 43-year-old Wales told the roughly three hundred gathered at a one-day webcom-Montréal conference on social networking and business. ”There is no way a book about the show Lost has more information than its Wikipedia entry.”

There is a new Wikipedia entry every six minutes, and the Lost section, put together by obsessed fans of the show which ended May 23, 2010, is one of the most popular sites, says Wales. But it’s not simply English-speakers who are part of the Wikipedia phenomenon: the Japanese use it to express their national obsession with pop culture and the Germans love to compile information about geography. The consumer traffic, in terms of page use, is comparable to the New York Times, says Wales.

Wales created his constantly updated encyclopedia to make information universally accessible. Supporters describe Wikipedia as democracy in action. The site has also been criticized for its inevitable inaccuracies. Wales, a self-described cheapskate, draws no revenue from Wikipedia.

Clearly not interested in using the Internet for profit, Wales struggled to answer the question on so many people’s minds at the conference: how can a company infiltrate social networking sites with their brand? How can a business use Twitter, Facebook and Wikipedia to sell people stuff?

”My first piece of advice is don’t make a product that sucks. You need to make your product compelling. After that, it’s about engaging in a collective conversation.”