user generated content

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…

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…)

Users vs Editors: A case study

June 27, 2007 By Dan Thornton

Rather than actually conducting a case study, there’s a rather easier way to compare ‘pure’ User Generated Content with some that has been edited, and the effect on accuracy, trust, and audience figures.

Most people are familiar with the famous (or infamous) online, user created and edited Wikipedia.org.

But last October (2006) a new, almost identical in design, wiki started. Called Citizendium, it’s founded by Larry Sanger (Co-founder of Wikipedia), and it also accepts user submitted content.

Except with Citizendium, UGC is subject to moderation by experts who have to provide proof of accreditation and qualifications.

Bearing in mind Citizendium is nine months old, whereas Wikipedia has six years behind it, it’s unfair to start comparing traffic figures etc at this stage. But it’s certainly interesting to take a look at the Editors of an area you have an interest in, and see if you’re more reassured by their watchful presence. Let’s just hope noone is able to dupe the system

‘Famous for 15 people’ – A response

June 27, 2007 By Dan Thornton

Inspired by a comment on my recent post about the myth of User Generated Content, I figured colleague and fellow digital person David Cushman deserved a fuller response than my reply…And hopefully this might inspire more people to get involved.
David has talked at length on his blog, Faster Future, about his concept of people becoming ‘Famous for 15 people‘, rather than ‘Famous for 15 minutes’. And in some ways, it makes a lot of sense.
After all, if you can reach the people most obsessive about a particular interest, whether you call them early adopters or obsessives, then you’re going to accurately target those most likely to engage and respond.

But this does miss some of the reasons for UGC creation, and some of the reason why certain UGC sites maintain an advantage. it’s also why I believe that there should be a bridge between ‘old’ media and new, rather than discarding the old.

To start with, I’d split UGC into two types. The first is that which comes from small groups of friends chatting, for instance on a forum, with high levels of interaction.
This is the type of UGC which most directly works with the ’15 people’ model, as posts to these key people will have a big effect.

But there is another type of UGC creation, which I’d call ‘formal’ or ‘broadcast’ UGC. This ranges from blogs to live webcam shows, and includes user radio shows, user videos etc. Many of these are not simply created in a desire to interact with users who share an interest, but are an attempt to gain fame and respect from the largest possible audience. It’s the only equivalent of appearing on Big Brother, or sending a story into a newspaper, and is part of human nature for those reared on the cult of celebrity. Those people will actively pick Youtube over a niche site, in order to get the widest possible audience for their video/photo/blog. While they’d be happy with interaction from a small number of people, they’d be happier still with a huge number of people. In the same way, I value the small and growing number of blog readers I have, but I’d be happier if they were part of an audience far larger, if only to gain leverage for getting stories.

There is also another aspect which i think the ’15 people’ concept appears to overlook, and I’ll hope Dave will forgive me if I’ve missed the explanation somewhere.

If I’m looking for content on a subject on which I have no previous interaction, I have a number of ways to find it.

A search will bring up those sites who have the best search ranking, or have paid, and I’m unlikely to go through more than a few pages of results.

I’ll post on a site I already use, and hope that another forum member shares my interest, and can recommend something. But I have no way to guage their knowledge of that particular subject.

I might spot a mention or link to a niche site recommended somewhere else, and go and visit. But even with a passionate niche site, I have no way to verify the information I’m given. Or I can choose a ‘traditional’ site, and hope that their professional journalists have integrity.

Those sites with huge audience figures and a mix of both professional and user news, reviews and opinions will win out, because they will have the highest ranking, the most familiar name, and the biggest implied trust on the first visit. And it’s perfectly possible for them to allow their audience to self-niche into smaller groups of interest.

It might seems paradoxical that a web 2.0 fan is debating such a web 2.0 concept, and coming out on the side of the internet and print monoliths, but I think it’s important to keep stating that there is a middle ground being ‘old’ and ‘new’ media which offers the best of both worlds, without any detriment to the user. Social news sites provide good examples of how a site with little or no editorial judgement can skew the news, with Digg, and Fark offering some strange views on the world on any given day.
For instance, Fark today has a ranking of 37 for a story from the Telegraph regarding Tony Blair’s last day in office, and the same ranking for a story about a man who wanted to see his dead girlfriend topless!

A UGC advocate could argue that it demonstrates both stories have equal appeal for readers, and to some extent that’s true. But if you were simply looking for topical stories of the day, there’s no reason why the site would even be this balanced.

Whereas a mix of a respected news source, such as the BBC, CNN, or whatever flavour news you fancy, combined with the UGC predeliction for the oddball stories you’d have emailed your friends in the old days, would have the best of both worlds.

I realise that some of these issues are perhaps wandering away from the original ‘famous for 15 people’ concept, but I really do feel that user needs are intertwined so much with new media that it’s hard to separate the issue into bie-sized chunks without missing the big picture.

And while I’d welcome comments from a small number of eloquent, intelligent regular readers, I can’t see a day when, as a writer, I wouldn’t want my work to be read by the widest possible audience.