The User Generated Content myth.
admin | June 24, 2007You know how everyone, their dog, and their dog’s dog is talking about User Generated Content, Engagement, and how everyone is dying to upload their lives onto the internet, if only they had the chance?
Bill Tancer from web audience measurement firm Hitwise has some stats for you:
0.16% of the people visiting Youtube are uploading videos.
0.2% are visiting Flickr to upload images.
Wikipedia has the biggest involvement at 4.6%
That’s not to say they aren’t immensely popular, and getting more so by the second.
“But despite relatively low-user involvement, visits to Web 2.0-style sites have spiked 668 percent in two years”
The lesson is that millions want to be able to take a peek at the private lives of others, and displaying User Generated Content is a great way to build an audience and get traffic. But don’t expect a huge amount of content to suddenly appear overnight. Especially if your site isn’t a giant like Youtube or Flickr. Because if they’re getting 0.2%, you can bet a site with a smaller audience will get far less than 0.2% uploading. After all, what kind of exhibitionist targets smaller groups of people?
Not sure that's logically consistent badge?I see much higher interaction
David Cushman | June 25, 2007Not sure that’s logically consistent badge?
I see much higher interaction rates in smaller groups - ie niche communities of shared interest.
This is only about exibitionism for those who crave 15 minutes of fame in the old mass media way, rather than to be famous for 15 people (see my posts on this ad infinitum). The latter is way more effective and engaging.
And thanks for the tornado tip… btw!
What do you mean by interaction?The 'famous for 15 people'
BadgerGravling | June 27, 2007What do you mean by interaction?
The ‘famous for 15 people’ theory looks at the concept of engagement from just one perspective, rather than the whole picture…
In my mind, it mixes two forms. one is that of the small forum of like-minded friends constantly exchanging banter and information about a specific point of interest. Call this informal UGC.
The other form is ‘formal’ UGC. That’s the content which is created to reach the widest possible audience, as part of human nature and the hunger for celebrity etc. For those people, they want to go to somewhere well known and with a big audience number for their medium. For video, for example, I’d use Youtube to reach a wider audience than any of it’s rivals. Within Youtube there are niche groups, but these are within the context of the larger audience, rather than separated out.