I got an E mail last night from an NFL colleague who’s out in S.F. at the Web 2.0 Conference. I have to admit I’m a bit jealous.
Here’s the latest news from the Web 2.0 conference
Here’s more broad conference coverage
New study says participation is low (Read CNET release)
Web 2.0, a catchphrase for the latest generation of Web sites where users contribute their own text, pictures and video content, is far less participatory than commonly assumed, a study showed on Tuesday.
A tiny 0.16 percent of visits to Google’s top video-sharing site, YouTube, are by users seeking to upload video for others to watch, according to a study of online surfing data by Bill Tancer, an analyst with Web audience measurement firm Hitwise.
Similarly, only two-tenths of one percent of visits to Flickr, a popular photo-editing site owned by Yahoo, are to upload new photos, the Hitwise study found. The vast majority of visitors are the Internet equivalent of the television generation’s couch potatoes–voyeurs who like to watch rather than create, Tancer’s statistics show.
Wikipedia, the anyone-can-edit online encyclopedia, is the one exception cited in the Hitwise study: 4.6 percent of all visits to Wikipedia pages are to edit entries on the site.
But despite relatively low-user involvement, visits to Web 2.0-style sites have spiked 668 percent in two years, Tancer said.
Final thoughts: I love going to those kinds of events. Yet I’m still digesting my experience at South by Southwest, and I’m off to LA next week for Econ SM, so I guess I need not let envy get the best of me.
The reason for that Pat, is that the users have very little incentives to contribute content. The satisfaction comes from consuming those contents. The next wave of startups should focus on giving users the incentive to contribute, and I think those that do will have a better chance of success.
[...] Web 2.0 has its ups and downs - Sports Marketing 2.0 | Pat Coyle I got an E mail last night from an NFL colleague who’s out in S.F. at the Web 2.0 Conference. I have to admit I’m a bit jealous… (tags: web2.0 conference sports-marketing,) [...]
I had the opportunity to attend this session at the conference and when I first saw the slide with these numbers I (believe it or not) thought about your previous 1% Rule post. Two questions jump out at me from this: 1) as a social startup, how do you build a large enough system to attract participants when so few of your audience will be active? and 2) once you reach a tipping point in the number of participants, do you really care that only 1% are active?
Reid Hoffman, during a different session at the conference, responded to question #1 by simply saying that when you can answer that question you will be ready for VC funding. It’s the question that all social sites need to be able to answer, but there doesn’t seem to be a clear path. I’d be curious to hear how others have approached this in the past.
As for #2, I think it’s very easy to go with the simple answer of “yes, of course it matters - you always want more active participants.” But, I think that if you start to delve deeper into this question and weigh the pros and cons surrounding the amount of time, effort and money that would need to go into incenting the participants to contribute more versus the profit you would reap, you might find a model that shows it’s not worth it. Just a thought…
Brian - Thanks for the thoughtful commentary. I share you curiosity…how indeed can we attract participants in enough volume to matter? Speaking for myself, we’re hoping to convert the regular audience that’s already on our dot com site and in our current forum, and (hopefully) engage a few of the less frequent visitors. As for your second question, the “1% rule seems to be pervasive”. Perhaps it’s human nature that only a smal % of people will speak up? If so, you can’t fight it, right?
If the only valued measure of contribution is publishing content, then these numbers might be distressing. However - without seeing these studies - my guess is that there was no attempt to value other key parts of a Web 2.0 site, such as dissemination of information. Those aren’t just “visitors” passively consuming content. They are also ambassadors of the site, who recruit new members, refer friends to new content, and use other Web 2.0 tools (like blogs) to let people know about it. Beneficial lurking behaviors, though, can’t easily be extracted from a database or web log.
Good points, Kevin.
I especially like the phrase “beneficial lurking behaviors”. I know what you mean, but it sounds funny