An analysis of data based on age, gender and frequency shows that the user-generated revolution may not be as mainstream as we think. Time reports.
The latest data on Internet participation reveals that only a very small percentage of Internet activity is related to users creating and publishing content.
… According to Hitwise, only 0.2% of visits to YouTube are users uploading a video, 0.05% visits to Google Video include uploaded videos and 0.16% of Flickr visits are people posting photos. Only the social encyclopedia Wikipedia shows a significant amount of participation, with 4.56% of visits to the site resulting in content editing.
Comments
@ 08:09
I don’t know that low participation suggests there’s been no mainstreaming effect. I think further analysis would show that user generated content is coming from diverse segments, and that low rates of generation or participation are a manifestation of the same ‘lurker effect’ that we’ve always seen on social platforms.
@ 08:58
There’s a more in-depth study by Forrester research, dealing especially with the segmentation. I wrote about it here:
http://well-formed-data.net/archives/65/forrester-research-social-technographics
Concerning the TIME magazine numbers, the reasoning is odd IMO:
“The 80/20 rule, also known as the Pareto Principle, states that 80% of all consequences stem from 20% of the causes. If true, the rule would then suggest that 80% of this new form of content is created by 20% of the users. ”
Here they talk about users.
“The rule, subject of countless business books, has no application when it comes to consumer-generated content. Far less than 1% of visits to most sites that thrive on user-created materials are attributable as participatory, the remaining 99% are passive visits.”
But now they talk about visits.
@ 12:31
As I try to explain here these levels of participation aren’t low. They’re perfectly alright. It’s just that the Time’s math is wrong.
@ 10:01
Depends what you mean by User generated contribution? Is UG only content/videos uploaded? Is it Q&A pairs in online forums? Is it photo uploads to flickr, is it votes in dellideastorm.com? Does tagging via delicious count? Diggs? Comments to this blog? I would argue that there is a spectrum on contribution types from rich to thin above just straight content viewing that is a part of the fabric of the participative web. Success will come from figuring out how to stitch all this activity together in ways that may content discovery and contribution easier. You could argue in some areas that decreasing contribution of content is a sign of success. If you look at many help and how to communities, how often do you see the same questions asked multiple times? If your system was tagging and crawling answers and presenting them back in more discoverable ways your unique contributions might flatten out or even decrease - but that would be a positive.
Just a few thoughts.
Sean
http://www.communitygrouptherapy.com
@ 10:41
My thoughs exactly, Sean. There is a number of user contribution types that the hitwise study doesn’t count. Furthermore, it focuses on visits, not users. If all users would upload photos on 0,16% of their visits and used the rest of the visits to view others’ content, the Hitwise study would conclude that 0,16% are participating, although everybody would have uploaded original content.
@ 18:18
Moritz is so right. Maybe a simple way to measure content creation is to compare content creation with *actual* content creation. - So what percentage of the living population produces material on the shelves at the local bookstore? That’s probably too complicated an idea though ’cause figuring out the number of unique entries on the web might be a bit trying. Or are we saying that videos are the only content worth creating?
My students are more likely to post images of artwork or poetry than video because it is personal expression that they are more able to control. Video is more complex.
@ 02:34
Excellent point Sean. The borders between content and metadata are blurring. Is a public bookmark a “content creation”? Probably not. But it constitutes valuable information, and by posting it, I surely participate in a process of collaborative information structuring. And again a similar point to the “visits” and “users” discussion can be made again. The fact that I only bookmark maybe 1 out of 100 pages I see: does that mean “low participation” or “highly selective partcipation” (a good thing)?
Very interesting and stimulating. Again, I appreciate the Forrester study for at least attempting a more fine-grained analysis.