Increasing user-generated content
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Description:
User-generated content refers to media content produced or primarily influenced by professional or non-professional end-users. As opposed to the traditional way of producing content, where traditional media producers, licensed broadcasters, and production companies create media content. User generated content reflects the expansion of media production through new technologies that are accessible and affordable to the general public. These include digital video, blogging, podcasting, mobile phone photography and wikis. In addition to these technologies, user-generated content may also employ a combination of open source, free software, and flexible licensing or related agreements to further diminish the barriers to collaboration, skill-building and discovery.[1]
User generated content is not exclusively related to the internet. Traditional media, like television, newspapers and radio also use forms of user generated content. The development of online user generated content enables more and more people to publish their ideas in an easy and quick way. The development of user generated content can directly be linked to the evolution of ‘Web 2.0’. Although the definition is debated, a common element in all discussion around Web 2.0 is the use the web as a platform for online collaboration (see: [2]).
A recent evolution of user generated content is crowd sourcing. In crowd sourcing, organizations or individuals ask others participate in research, reviews, brainstorming or consulting. In crowd sourcing, the public is actively involved in the organization’s processes. It assumes that the ideas, opinions and work of the community add value to organizations [3],The balance between crowdsourced and "expert" opinion.
Enablers:
- Increasing use of internet [4]
- Increasing use of digital media on internet [5]
- Increasing number of people going online [6]
- Increasing need of people for communication and information [7]
- Increasing use and importance of Virtual Communities [8]
- Increasing Power of Information [9]
- Growing availability of broadband services
- Network bandwidth [10]
- Low cost of internet connections [[11]]
- Growing availability of internet connected devices (PDAs, Smartphones, laptops)
- Development of internet technologies
- Metcalfe's Law applied to social networks [12]
- Wealth increase
- Democratization of public opinion / knowledge [13]
Inhibitors:
- Increasing copyright issues
- The increase of identities / creating accounts is unpractical for users
- Cost of broadband services
- Increasing complexity / overload of information
Paradigms:
1. Opinion is not longer a monopoly of the traditional mass-media outlets (newspapers, magazines, news channels, etc) but it is seriously quetioned by independent journalists
2. The content available on internet is not longer unmodifiable. Users can create, modify, share and comment on the content of internet pages. The net is becoming a display window to promote your own creations
3. Internet is not longer a space for getting information but a space to share experiences and opinions
4. Content is not something that is created by professionals. It can be created by everyone who is interested in a subject.
5. Content is not something static. It is dynamic and constantly changing.
Experts:
Timing:
1983: Introduction of digital video
1988: The first digital camera is developed
1989: The Internet is opened to commercial use
1990: The world Wide Web (WWW) is created
1994: The first blog is created
2000: Broad band internet becomes available
2001: Wikipedia is launched
2001: Implementation of podcast
2002: about 10% of Americans have high-speed connections at home. 16% said they had posted online content to the web. Those ‘early adopters’ can be characterized as the ‘broad band elite’: male, well educated, comfortable financially [14]
2003: My space is founded
2005: YouTube is founded
2005: BBC uses user-generated content to cover london bombings
2006: 42% of Americans used the internet. From this group, 37% of the men and 32% of the women said they had posted online content to the web. People who are most likely to put online content on the web are young people (<30) with broad band connections at home. [15]
2008: 55% of the Americans use the internet. From them, 40% has ever posted content on the web.[16]
Web Resources:
1. Wikipedia: an user-generated encyclopedia [17]
2. User generated content on Wikipedia [18]
3. Crowdsourcing on Wikipedia [19]
4. About Web 2.0: [20]and [21]
5. History of Broadband [22]
6. Pewinternet: research on internet use [23] and [24]
7. MySpace Homepage [25]
8. YouTube website[26]
9. Online Journalism Review [27]
10. Packaged Goods Media vs. Conversational Media: a comparison of UGC and professional/corporate media[28]