flickr

My Christmas: Information as gifts…

January 2, 2009 By Dan Thornton

One of the detractions around social media, social networking and blogging etc is that there are plenty of people in the ‘real world’ who don’t give a monkeys about the internet.

Which may well be true, but in addition to the somewhat reasonable 140 million+ active users on Facebook, this holiday season emphasised how the world is changing on a personal level – namely the relationship between an online geek (me), and his almost technophobe parents.

It started pre-Christmas, when my folks replaced their aging desktop with a shiny new laptop and signed up for broadband. (For reference, the desktop must be about 10 years old, and they were still on dial-up!)

Then they started asking me to find albums by relatively niche Irish folk artists on Amazon. And my mother decided to borrow Tribes – which is promising as she completed a degree in sociology in her spare time a few years ago with marks I’ll always be proud and envious of!

But Christmas really was The Tipping Point.

For starters, their gift to me was a copy of Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, Outliers: The Story of Success.

My gift in return was a webcam, and a quick lesson in using Windows Live Messenger, Gmail, and Flickr. (We tried Twitter but that’s probably a step too far!)

The reasons were simple:

1. They already have a hotmail email account, and although there might be better IM clients, not only is Windows Live Messenger pretty simple and easy to use, but enough people use it that I wouldn’t be sole technical support.

The main reason is that it means they can see their grandson on webcam whenever we’re online.

2. Gmail is intended to be a starting point for them to hopefully move to Google Calendar, Google Docs etc.

The main reason is that it means I can share my calendar so we can all schedule our lives and events without playing telephone tennis for days and weeks beforehand. Facebook might also be useful, but that’s for Phase 2!

3. Flickr is a nice way to start seeing the value of sharing images, tagging, etc.

But the main thing is that my dad has always had an artistic side which is always underexploited, and has always be into photography. Plus they can see ‘family only’ images of the family.

We’ve already had a couple of webcam enabled chats over IM, and I’m hoping it’ll encourage them to explore and try other new ways to share and communicate with friends and family. I’m certainly past the age of worrying that connecting with my parents might make me seem less cool, or that they’d see an inappropriate picture or comment – at my age, the chances to behave inappropriately are frustratingly rare!

Why I hate Yahoo right now…

July 31, 2008 By Dan Thornton

I totally accept that part of this problem is my responsibility. I’ve been on the web for a long time, and I should know enough by now to make sure I don’t lose user names and passwords. But when I’m stupid enough to make a mistake, do I have to be punished by losing a number of services – and deal with the clunky Yahoo Customer Support process?

So basically I seem to have confused by Yahoo password. No big deal. But, of course, thanks to Yahoo buying and aggregating MyBlogLog and Flickr, the same password controls those services. And at some point I cleared all my cache and saved bookmarks!

So I try to get an id and password reminder, but bearing in mind I set up the account years ago, I have about 4 options for the postcode I set, for example, and the same number of alternate emails. And that’s assuming I accurately filled in my information in the first place.

Having torn my hair out, I email Customer Services. And I get a reply asking me to call the Account Verification team between 6am and 6pm Pacific Time. Bearing in mind I’m in the UK, I’ve now got to work out the time difference. And when I do get through to them, they’re going to ask me for my verification information again – which I obviously don’t have, or the automated service would have worked!

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh.

Bearing in mind the drive towards single identities etc online, I can only pray someone is working on a better mechanism to ensure users don’t lose all their services in one mistake.

Edit: I eventually managed to get back in after guessing the right username and password combo. Everything is now updated to prevent future problems – except for my email address. Every time I try and update by clicking on the validation link for an email account I actually use, it tells me it’s timed out after five days, despite the fact the request and email were sent within the last hour!

Don’t swap journalists for users quite yet…

October 5, 2007 By Dan Thornton

User generated content (UGC), citizen journalism, blogging. I’m a huge fan of all three when used correctly, but they all need to be handled with care by traditional media companies, whether it’s not serving them properly, or, in the case I’m going to hypothesise about, overestimating their effect.

Way back in June I quoted figures which put submissions to Youtube at 0.16% of users, while Flickr submissions were at 0.2%. Wikipedia was the involvement leader with 4.6%. Which should be one worry to the people I’ve spoken to who believe traditional journalists will be replaced by users in the near future.

Putting this to one side, along with discussions of trust, I think there is a further concern which anyone should consider before cutting journalists in favour of UGC.

And that’s going to be a growing rise in the need for payment for UGC. The oft cited example of OhMyNews already pays for submissions, and some bloggers are now being paid to produce work professionally. At the moment, these are exceptions rather than the rule for User Generated Content.

But there’s an established global market which already handsomely rewards creativity, and which will have an effect on any creative efforts produced. Users of MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Rolepaying Games), or users of Xbox Live will already be familiar with the concept of creating virtual items, Forza Motorsport car liveries, or a wealth of other content, and being reward in game currency, or via online auction sites in real money. And then there’s Anshe Chung, the Second Life millionaire…

As increasing numbers of people are playing online games, and are familiar with the concept of virtual capitalism, then they won’t be satisfied with the fame of having their content published on a large website, and will increasing expect fair recompense for their efforts…

And to get the best UGC, to make it worthwhile, you’ll need to be making your site more financially rewarding…

And the worst part will be that your submissions will now come from people who aren’t tied by a contract or a notice period. Instead they’ll be free to submit to any site which appears overnight with a more attractive offer…

(None of this is meant to dissuade you from using UGC on your site… But as with anything, it’s one aspect of the future of online publishing, not the only answer…)

The User Generated Content myth.

June 24, 2007 By Dan Thornton

You 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?

flickr

Recent Comments