social networking

Contributing to the internet for more than just recognition…

January 30, 2008 By Dan Thornton

I’ve had several conversations about user generated content with my colleague and fellow blogger David Cushman (and you can read his take here.)

Any online submission or rating system needs to have some reward to make the time invested worthwhile. And most of the current models use recognition as that reward, including Digg and Del.icio.us.

But the idea of payment is most definitely spreading. For a while bloggers could monetise their work either with advertising on their site – or by submitting articles to sites like Blogburst. Or even by writing content for sites like Helium.

But the options are growing every day. (Note, I’m not vouching for the earning potential, or payments from any of the sites in this post)

You could earn by using a social network like Yuwie.

Or you could submit links and comments to social review aggregator (and Digg clone), Ximmy.

Or by submitting videos to the likes of Revver.

Or you could even submit pages of search returns for Mahalo.

What’s interesting is how these sites will fair, and how the payment system evolves. Is payment enough to tempt enough users to make Yuwie or Ximmy a viable alternative? Because currently the payment system is definitely aimed at keeping payments as an optional bonus rather than a viable reason to justify the time involved.

Mahalo, meanwhile, takes a more valuable view of the content provided – as it should if it will challenge the likes of the Google search algorithm. Whereas Yuwie or Ximmy offer miniscule amounts for micro actions, Mahalo pays a huge amount, by comparison. But it also expects a lot more work, and applies a rigorous judging procedure.

But the main risk I can see for any of these new business is that their success could easily pave the way for competitors to attack them in a simple price war. And that could lead to a lot of false promises and unmade payments until finally the payment equilibrium puts a fair market price of user submissions, participation, and content.

That’s why I wouldn’t advise anyone to build a system around payment alone. But increasingly payment is becoming an expected part of participation and has to be factored into any social plan. The only variable is whether 1000 links to articles is worth $10 of my time for Ximmy – or a page of researched and picked search returns is worth $10 of my time on Mahalo!

This is just the start of my research into the online user economy, and economics isn’t my main skill, so I’d be really interested in opinions, comments, and anyone’s experiences with using paid UGC sites of any type…

(For the record, I’ve signed up with almost every site mentioned, but I’m still working towards any actual payments!)

Getting paid to play… social networking for cash…

October 23, 2007 By Dan Thornton

A new social network site is offering to pay users for taking part. Yuwie aims to reward users for activity and referring more friends to the network, taking inspiration from old-style pyramid schemes.

You get paid for changing your profile, posting content, and when users look at your profile and content. And you get a share of everything from anyone you introduce, and anyone they introduce, up to the 10th level. So far, so multi-level marketing.

As for the actual site, it’s OK. It’s no Facebook beater for functionality, but it’s comparable to Myspace etc, with more focus on connecting and gaining views than actually on your profile appearance. Not surpising for something which is about getting an absolute shedload of connections in an attempt to grab some cash.

The scheme itself gets detractors picking up on the pyramid nature of the scheme, the high input versus low reward, and the encouragement to spam everyone you’ve ever met in the quest for a few more cents. And I think they’re all valid points.

If you do still want to try it for yourself, obviously I have to advise you to use my referral url: http://r.yuwie.com/badgergravling

I also have to say that so far, any commentary on the site gives rise to spam posts from Yuwie fans/employees/bots, so I look forward to 20 comments on this post tomorrow. And then deleting them all.

The interesting thing for me is how many people will be enticed to take part in the experiement. Most Long Tail and UGC fans promote the idea that the prosumers in the long tail aren’t doing it for the financial reward.

I’d strongly and heavily debate that someone spending hours creating videos, songs, apps and blogs isn’t looking for some type of reward, and that it’s a lack of opportunities to be reimbursed currently which has meant a focus on reward from social recognition and status etc. Sharing and exchanging ideas and knowledge improves the standing of everyone involved, but that tends to be more readily accepted by those who can afford to do it.

And when something like Yuwie comes along offering the chance to combine financial reward with social status and recognition it’s an interesting case study.

As of tonight, Yuwie is claiming 183,448 users, 78,471 this month, and 2697 today. That’s a fairly good curve to be on for the short term. How the business idea and interest pans out will be more interesting, as more people will be spreading the word about their good and bad experiences, and others could adapt the business model.

Interestingly Alexa shows a huge growth for Yuwie over the likes of Virb (which is a far nicer networking tool for design etc), although obviously it’s far smaller than most of the established names at present.

If not, there’s always the low paid, labour intensive prospect of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Or Deviantart for artists. Or for musicians, how about Amie Street to upload and sell your music for a web 2.0 crowd set price.

There’s a lot of options for the talented but financially uninterested. And the one great thing about the internet is that if you invest the time and effort, you can hedge your bets by going for more than one outlet…

Now that’s a Long Tail…

You don’t make real friends with Social Networks

September 12, 2007 By Dan Thornton

Researchers at Sheffield Hallam University have surveyed social network users, and discovered that you’re unlikely to make real, close friends, as reported on the Guardian
Despite the huge lists of contacts you can accumulate, the number of real, close friends is around the same as you’d have offline, and will tend to be people that you’ve met in real life.
Facebook, Myspace, Bebo et al can allow you to message 100s, or even 1000s of friends (In Robert Scoble’s case), but the actual number of close friends is likely to be about……five.
The reason is that humans tend to only really trust people after face-to-face interaction.

That figure may change as users become more trusting in connections made via social networking, but certainly it suggests that the social network would need to result in face-to-face meetings for real trust to be formed.

There’s also research that suggests those people who interact most successfully online are the same people who are most social-minded offline.

With all this is mind, it suggests that simply joining a social network and adding friends etc will simply maintain your existing contact list. The only way to use them to gain new contacts would be to go to the next level of participating in groups and discussion boards etc, utilising the now old school mechanisms of chat rooms and forums.

Certainly I’m a member of a huge range of social networking sites, but the only new friends who have become in any way close friends have come from two very focused forums, and one of those groups came together to attend a real life meeting.

The one reassuring thing is that it means those who put in time and effort will still gain more from social networking than those who just sign up to be part of the crowd…which is the way it should be.

When to be social?

August 16, 2007 By Dan Thornton

I’ve been debating part of the new Disposable Media website with a colleague, and it seems to be a topic that will apply to any new website/social app.

Is it worth having a forum? And how do you stop it staying empty?

My feeling is that it’s always worth having a forum. Although they have been supplanted by social networks when it comes to publicity, they are still immensely popular, easy to set set-up and use, and drive a different sort of interaction than many social networking sites. It’s a place for visitors to browse, hang out, and even if 95% of your audience are unlikely to contribute, you can bet a significant proportion will still pop in to have a look.

Getting it populated is trickier. I’m listing ideas below, but feel free to add more in the comments, or contact mcndant at hotmail dot com if you’re shy.

1. Encourage, help and bribe staff to post often. Being able to interact with the people running a forum/website is critical. It means you can judge what your most vocal audience think, and then respond. It also gives you a chance to explain why things may take a long time, get feedback on new changes, and improve things.

2. Keep it simple and grow. It’s pointless starting 200 seperate forums with 1 post in each, when you could have one vibrant forum. You can always split out into categories later, so why force restrictions from the start? And monitor which bits get a decent level of interest. Most cities grew from villages and towns, and weren’t just invented overnight. The same applies to forums.

3. Treat it with respect, and allow users to make it home. Think of the forum like a village. Your job is to provide the gas, water and bricks for building. It’s not to restrict your users. Let them upload avatars and signatures (Images as well if you have the bandwith). Make changes to the navigation to let them craft the way it looks and feels. If you show you’re ready to listening to your forum users, they’ll be far more likely to listen when you have something to share.

4. Rule with a light hand and consistent rules. Noone wants a telling off from a moderator, but the way it’s delivered will make a big difference. And having clear, straight-forward rules which apply equally to all makes life a lot easier for everyone. Noone likes it when the rules can change on them. The flipside is that the best forums all have some form of moderation by owners or users to stop the worst excesses of offensive posting and spamming.

5. Don’t make it different for the sake of it: The majority of forums are based on one or two of the most popular free forum software providers. Which means people know and understand the way those forums work immediately. Throw something different in their face and they’ll have to figure out how it works, before they figure out how to make the most of it.

Those are some obvious, but often missed observations. But really this is just to get the ball rolling, so please do add your thoughts and suggestions. Either comment below, or email mcndant at hotmail dot com.

Alternatively, you can now join The Way of the Web on Facebook.