Mashable - The Social Media Guide - Latest Comments in The User-Generated Content Reality

Re: The User-Generated Content Reality

www.lake-shore.co.uk — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 10:07:35 -0000

The Roar is very much a 'lean-forward' content area that people are passionate about.

Re: The User-Generated Content Reality

Chris Saad — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 17:06:15 -0000

Mark - looks like you described one of the use cases of APML - as the profile on which the personalization algorithms would work :)

Re: The User-Generated Content Reality

Zac — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 14:42:15 -0000

In my experience, user generated content is easier the more the topic-area is 'lean-forward' (ie, involving and engaging).

For instance, I run two reasonably well trafficked blogs. One is a design / cool products site (www.lostateminor.com). It's 'lean-back' content - stuff you check-out over lunch, but don't get too involved with. We get only a few submissions, and comments are rare (even though we reach over 100,000+ uvs).

I also run a sports opinion blog (www.theroar.com.au). This is geared towards sports opinion discussion - with a user generated model. This has a huge level of submissions and comments (we average over 60 long, involved and passionate comments a day, plus user-gen article submissions).

The Roar is very much a 'lean-forward' content area that people are passionate about.

Finally - one last observation: user generated content works only when seeded with strong existing content.

We have a news feed for The Roar, so does Newsvine (the ultimate user-generated site). Facebook / MySpace etc have existing profiles.

Where sites struggle, I think, is understanding that strong user-generated content must first be seeded with strong baseline content.

Re: The User-Generated Content Reality

csven — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 12:59:35 -0000

{correction: "...content does *go* down..."}

Re: The User-Generated Content Reality

csven — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 12:55:32 -0000

"the 1% rule states that approximately 1% of active users will submit content to a system"

If I'm not mistaken, that's *original* content. In that light, while Twitter, Facebook and perhaps Myspace break from it, I'd be hesitant to say YouTube breaks from that rule. If one looks at the ratio of original content to the professional content that's being uploaded and then endlessly recycled, I'd venture the ratio isn't "completely shattered completely".

I tend to think that the percentage of actual *user-generated* content does down the more difficult the tools for creating it. So text and photos (Twitter, Flickr, aso) are very likely to have higher percentages. Video and 3D content will likely have less.

That said, I don't consider this a static thing. Video is now sufficiently inexpensive - with user-friendly tools - that the biggest barrier are all the things outside of the core technology (writing a real script, getting all the participants, managing and funding all the rest). Fabbed goods will probably follow a similar path. As the 3D tools become increasingly affordable (or free) and easy to use, and more people learn, the more they'll find that the barriers are lots of things many people don't consider (material limitations, safety & legal issues, knowledge of mechanisms and electronics, etc).

That said, I agree and believe that UGC of whatever degree or type is only going to become more prevalent. YouTube may be filled will anime clips mashed up with someone else's music, but those people are learning some skills.

Re: The User-Generated Content Reality

Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 11:44:34 -0000

I think you may be missing the applications I am speaking of, such as TwitterWhere that I reviewed last week, or the track features within Twitter, or RSS feeds.

These have very little to do with statistics. Depending on who you're following, also very little to do with sewage.

Re: The User-Generated Content Reality

Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 09:26:00 -0000

No, and I probably should have explained this a bit better, the 1% rule states that approximately 1% of active users will submit content to a system.

To further illustrate the point, a single twitter about the San Diego fire isn't that interesting on it's own, and probably not interesting at all taken in the context of the thousands of tweets from that person's history.

That same tweet, in context of that twitterer's and all the other twitterers words in context to the fires is valuable and interesting.

Re: The User-Generated Content Reality

PXLated — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 09:17:09 -0000

There has always been UGC...ie: photos, usually stored in albums or a drawer...the only thing that's changed is this UGC is more assessable via the web. The 1% rule would probably apply to the percentage others find interesting/useful though. :-)