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BusinessWeek Misses the Point on UGC

Mathew Ingram — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 15:31:35 +0000

BusinessWeek magazine has a piece about user-generated content and how it’s old and busted now — people really want professional content, apparently.

As proof that “one after another,” video sites are turning their backs on UGC and going steady with the pros instead, BusinessWeek gives us one example: Mania.tv, which recently refocused and got rid of the user-generated part of its model, which apparently never really drew that many viewers.

Of course, it’s possible that Mania either didn’t approach that part of its business properly, or didn’t bother looking for the diamonds in the UGC rough — or maybe people were too busy uploading their stuff to YouTube and DailyMotion and Metacafe. It’s tough being third or fourth to the party, as a number of commenters have pointed out on Lost Remote.

The thing that really bugs me about the BusinessWeek article is that there’s this false dichotomy between high-quality professional content and low-quality UGC crap. It’s not that binary, I would argue. It’s more like a spectrum, with professional content on one end, and as you move down the scale you get lower quality, until there’s your brother-in-law singing karaoke.

Is there a lot of UGC crap that only someone’s mother would watch? Sure there is. But there’s a lot of garbage produced by “professionals” that gets foisted on people through traditional media too, whether they want it or not. I’d take some half-decent UGC over that any day.

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Microsoft, Viacom Posture On Content Sharing

WebProNews Staff — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 12:07:15 +0000

The newly announced User Generated Content Principles, backed by several media companies, exhorts websites to filter content while paying lip service to fair use.

Microsoft, Viacom Posture On Content Sharing

CBS, Disney, Fox, NBC, and Viacom are among those boosting User Generated Content Principles, a set of guidelines for sharing content online without violating anyone’s copyrights. Sharing through a service like YouTube should be allowed, provided it takes place in accordance with their suggested rules:

In coming together around these Principles, Copyright Owners and UGC Services recognize that they share several important objectives:
(1) the elimination of infringing content on UGC Services,
(2) the encouragement of uploads of wholly original and authorized user-generated audio and video content,
(3) the accommodation of fair use of copyrighted content on UGC Services, and
(4) the protection of legitimate interests of user privacy.
We believe that adhering to these Principles will help UGC Services and Copyright Owners achieve those objectives.

But as David Kravets indicated on Threat Level, YouTube and Google aren’t among those promoting the UGCP, as they just unveiled a system to accomplish the same task.

The lengthy UGCP document mentions ‘fair use’ four times. It doesn’t mention what the supporting organizations consider fair use, a situation that really needs to be clarified in this day and age.

Don’t wait for the media companies to help with this. Since fair use is a nebulous concept at best, these titans of industry could have served the Internet using public by defining what will and won’t draw a DMCA notice from the UGCP signatories.

It’s difficult to see UGCP as anything other than a tacit endorsement of what Microsoft wants to promote in the digital rights management space. Without a better definition of fair use, UGCP isn’t of much use to anyone outside of a movie or TV studio, or a recording label. It doesn’t serve the public one bit.

Social Networking & UGC in Today’s Media Environment

Jeremy Pepper — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 17:08:23 +0000

From the Playboy perspective with Christie Hefner – that true brands represent attitude and a point of view, that can be moved from one product to another. It can play in different spaces.

It is about evolving and expanding the brand, as the media landscape has continued to change. Embrace and leverage new opportunities. How do you expand a brand that has gone into television, online, mobile – what is the next step for Playboy that will continue to expand and transform the publication.

Online is the democratization of content – the diminishing of authority has been the result, though.

It is becoming more dynamic, more interactive. The original fear was that online was going to devolve where people did not interact in the meat world anymore. For Playboy, though, it has been the opposite where they extend the brand online and in the real world with the sponsorships of events. It is about creating an experience around the brand with Playboy destinations – going for high tech and high touch, to continue to interact with customers.

Pick the places that seem obvious, safe and smart for the public to take possession of the brand. One such place is Playboy Island in Second Life – showcases what people want to do, what games to play, what apparel they want: it’s a microcosm of a focus group, but in real-time and live.

A breakdown of the silos, a breakdown of the walls to become permeable to think of the experience of the brands, experience to marketers and experience to consumers. We will learn from our consumers, and user generated content is just going to strengthen the brand. It’s a local / global mind-set, where you extend the brand into various technologies around the world, depending on how they are used worldwide.

Realization that PlayboyU was not a success, so listening to the community and embracing what they want in the community, as well as share with them the Playboy knowledge and understanding. It’s a give and take with a discriminating demographic.

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Social Media: You Built it; Now What?

Alex Blum — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 19:46:45 +0000

Web developers and designers for huge companies and niche sites alike are all jumping on the social media bandwagon, realizing that social networking, user-generated content, video-sharing and Widgets are more than just ways to kill time in the office; they can be incredibly effective in growing and increasing audience engagement.

While it’s easier than ever to create and deploy social media, for many, the effort stops there. Kevin Costner’s famous line in Field of Dreams, “if you build it, they will come”, does not apply to making these online communities come alive. It’s futile to just dip your toe into the world of social media and hope it works. On the contrary, there needs to be a commitment to making the online community not just exist, but thrive. Marketing and promotion, programming, and community leadership are some of the factors that must be considered, whether you are a Fortune 500 company looking to extend your brand online, or a creative developer designing a personal site.

To get you on your way, here are nine steps to consider as you embark on your online community journey:

1) Start by defining your community’s purpose and audience.

Matt Haughey, founder of the legendary online community MetaFilter, said: “There are lots of possible reasons to start a community, but generally it’s good to focus on a specific topic. Having a specific topic means you’ll have an easier time explaining your site’s purpose, and quickly finding like-minded people to contribute their thoughts and content….”

If you already have a website and an audience, you probably have a good head start. But if you don’t, pick a topic and get to know the people for whom you’ll be building the community. If it’s for chefs, spend some time where chefs hang out—both online and off. Talk to people and cultivate relationships. The better you understand what drives your audience, the more likely you’ll build a community they find valuable.

2) Managing your community can be a full time job.

Every party needs a host or hostess. Your Community Manager should be your most active, high-profile member—accountable to everyone and responsible for setting the tone for the community experience. He or she needs to be patient, well spoken and inspiring. The goal isn’t for this person to control the community, but to curate it- the work done up front will pay off later in spades. For many large communities this can be a full time job, but as your community flourishes, other hosts will emerge from your member base to absorb part of the load.

3) Choose the technology that’s right for you.

New technologies have put robust community-building functionality within everyone’s reach. When considering a platform, ask yourself the following questions:

·    What social media features map to my specific objectives?

·    How will my goals evolve over time? Is this a solution that will scale with me?

·    What tech expertise/resources will it require to launch and maintain?

·    How long will it take to implement?

·    What are the solution’s community management and reporting capabilities?

·    How much will it cost?

4) Seed your community with great content.

Prior to launch (and for as long as it takes to gain momentum) seed your community with high-quality, relevant content. Consider inviting a core group of people to help. When you launch, this seed content will spark discussions, give visitors a sense of what your community is all about, and send the message that it’s a happening place to be.

5) Appearances matter.

Almost everyone who joins your community will evaluate it before becoming a member, so it’s important to make a good first impression. In addition to great content, your community’s look and feel will heavily influence a potential member’s decision. Tailor the aesthetic to match your brand and appeal to your audience. If you’re integrating your community into an existing website, keep your design and navigation consistent throughout. Not only will this increase the flow of traffic between your site and community, but it will show visitors that your community is an important part of your website.

Here are a few great examples of brands that have built online communities with an eye towards style and usability:

DIY Network’s My Projects: www.diynetworks.com

Autobytel’s MyRide community: http://community.myride.com

SkiNet.com: http://community.skinet.com

6) Promote your community.

As we mentioned above, just because you’ve built your community doesn’t mean people will come. You’ll need to market your community as you would any other product. This can include raising awareness in your website’s existing audience, reaching out to bloggers and traditional media, creating incentives for people to join through contests and promotions, inviting influential people to become members, and even purchasing advertising.

7) Encourage active participation.

The most active and passionate members are your community’s lifeblood. Recruit and reward them immediately—it’s as much their community as it is yours. Highlight their contributions wherever possible, and ask for their help and feedback. Contests and promotions are also great for driving ongoing participation – people LOVE to win stuff. Radio stations have done this with great success for decades!

8) Manage your community with fair-minded consistency.

Part of community management is keeping the site free of trouble-makers and offensive content; as a wise man once said, “every party has a pooper.” The trick is to strike a balance between order and openness. Stay active and lead by example and most people will follow. If you do run into a jerk, speak with them as quickly and as nicely as possible, telling them what they did wrong and why it’s something you don’t allow, but making sure to keep your tone courteous and professional. In the words of Kathy Sierra, the most successful communities are single-mindedly committed to enforcing one rule: “Be Friendly.”

Also, consider posting a plain-language set of community guidelines (like these from CaféMom) and invite your members to make suggestions about how to improve them. Lastly, if you’re building your community around a company website, don’t get defensive when members make negative comments about your products or services. They’re going to do it somewhere, so it might as well be in your community. Allowing them to do it there indicates confidence, which members will respect.

9) Listen and optimize.

Listen to what your community says, both directly and indirectly. Don’t just pay attention to members’ words (i.e. comments and posts); you should also keep an eye on the highest-rated and most-viewed content to get a better picture of what your members want. Also, have a place in the community where people can talk about the community itself, like a message board (another gem from Mr. Haughey). This is a great opportunity to see what people are thinking and to test out your ideas. Lastly, measure your community’s traffic and statistics from the beginning, so you can judge your progress as you go.

Building a community site can take days, but building a successful, engaged community requires more effort. Dedicating a little time and focus will make it extremely rewarding for both your company and your community.

YouTube On P2P? Watch Out For Falling Lawyers

WebProNews Staff — Wed, 23 May 2007 17:26:03 +0000

These guys seem to be on to something – probably the reason Tribler racked up about $8 million in funding on the other side of the Pond.

Probable piracy problems aside, the peer-to-peer network is raising some eyebrows with its YouTube-compatible BitTorrent system throwing down Last.fm-style.

NewTeeVee‘s Janko Roettgers notes the difficulty torrent users have finding niche content in a p2p world where mainstream media dominates. Holland-based Tribler has a mission of helping its users locate and share user-generated media, including YouTube.

But the neatest (or spookiest, depending on view of smart technology) function of Tribler keeps track of user downloads, compares them to other users’ downloads, and recommends media based on that history.

And this how the fringe content is introduced into the mainstream.

Tribler’s "P2P infrastructure for user-generated content that also helps with content discovery" has not only attracted a ton of funding, but has also captured the attention Netherlands Public Broadcasting and other European television networks.

Expect to hear more about Tribler (and the BitTorrent clients that arise like it) in the future.

ComScore: 18-34 Males Receptive To UGC Ads

WebProNews Staff — Tue, 22 May 2007 13:01:35 +0000

The always-desired marketing demographic of males aged 18-34 is pretty open to advertising on user-generated content sites.

We’ll be surprised if there aren’t fireworks exploding over Madison Avenue as ad agency executives collectively pass out from priapic shock over the prospect of reaching the unreachable demographic. Young men spend money, and marketers want to get in front of them in any way possible.

User generated content sites may be the route to take. A study by comScore found a silver lining in the otherwise depressing attention level garnered by user-generated content sites, which they measured at 28 percent.

“When we analyzed the data by demographic segments, we found that 18

Missing From the UGC Viability Discourse

Andrew Goodman — Thu, 17 May 2007 16:35:38 +0000

In this wave of the Internet economy, investors are self-consciously considering investing in plays that depend on "user-generated content." In the past, Internet investments were more haphazard. Today’s discourse is much more sophisticated.

So naturally, in discussions of the viability of burgeoning online communities, a big question is: why would anyone contribute? Why would you upload a video? Why would you write a product review?

Certainly the puzzle of how to induce someone to "give up" valuable information and to share and contribute their ideas is an interesting one. In spite of the apparent growth of the so-called "pro-am" movement, the impulse to contribute isn’t universal, so maybe it’s unnatural? Unlikely? Unrealistic to expect it from people? I guess that depends on how you look at it.

If you’re too much of a sceptic on this question, of course, you assume no bonds of reciprocity; no impulse towards gossip; no sense of duty; you in fact assume that we do not live in a society.

Now if you’re the victim of a survey research call at dinner, you might answer as the Alberta farmer did when I was making those putrid calls many years ago: "I’ve worked hard for what I got, and I’d like to keep it that way." Answering a few questions about attitudes towards the environment, and who he’d be voting for in the next election, would be tantamount to theft, in his mind.

But what if you’re part of a viable community, rather than just being interrupted at dinner?

What if John Rawls, the last century’s most pre-eminent American philosopher, was right? That we have a "sense of justice" necessary to be "fully cooperating members of society"? To figure out why any society would share values and information to the extent that they agree on how power and communications roughly work (eg. shared signals, common laws, etc.), philosophers like Rawls made certain assumptions. In some way these were based on modern empirical reality, given the structures of laws in most modern societies.

Rawls also defined the sense of justice — as "the capacity to understand, to apply, and to act from the public conception of justice which characterizes the fair terms of cooperation." The fact that Elliot Spitzer brought major business leaders to account speaks a lot to the sense of justice that an Attorney-General must have if we’re to live in a just society, but the broader point is that his work was by and large endorsed by society.

Many online peering and sharing activities don’t require a sense of justice, but some do. There is something else at work in the reciprocal uploading of music and other content — it doesn’t require a "sense of justice," precisely — but it’s probably part of the same family. It is, at least, a sense of reciprocity or mutuality.

On RateMyProfessors or HotOrNot or something else entirely, the activity’s a bit more frivolous that a "sense of justice" would require, but again, it’s in the same family.

People writing book reviews on Amazon is part of a more mature – if often unfair – process of contributing to that general social discourse. This is starting to get more like what I’m talking about.

There are a great many communities that have yet to be built online, that look a little like some of the things we’ve seen so far, but simply aren’t yet as mature. Consumer Reports is published out of something like a sense of justice and is consumed mostly passively. These kinds of impulses will soon take a more contemporary, distributed form online, a more mature form than a click on a "Hot or Not" button.

Recent news items about Optionable, Inc., a trading firm somehow mixed up in a natural gas trading scheme with a much larger partner, BMO Financial, indicate that a habitual financial "whistleblower" began noticing unusual trading patterns in the futures markets. As she had done on numerous occasions in the past, the woman, a 51-year-old president of an investment club, began sending notes to regulatory authorities alerting them to the problems. One response might be to ask what’s special about this woman to cause her to have such an elevated sense of justice; moral outrage, even. Then again, if she plays in the same markets, she also has a vested interest in a level, transparent playing field. I’d like to think there’s a little of that in all of us. Whatever, you can’t argue with the fallout when information inevitably gets out. Optionable’s stock has fallen from $9 to 50 cents, and the company is now embroiled in scandal.

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Yahoo On UGC Train To Taiwan

WebProNews Staff — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 15:19:15 +0000

Yahoo! announced two major deals this week to expand its Web 2.0 offerings Taiwan. Shortly after Yahoo! Taiwan acquired user-generated-content site Wretch.cc, the company announced an agreement with GigaMedia to cross-promote online game site FunTown.

With 2.8 million members, Wretch is the most popular USG site in Taiwan, hosting blogs, vlogs, and online photo-sharing. The company is also planning to launch a video site similar to YouTube.

Yahoo announced the acquisition Thursday without disclosing the terms, and expects the deal to close early next year. Wretch will continue to operate independently.

Today, Yahoo announced a strategic cooperation with GigaMedia Limited’s FunTown, based in Taipei, to co-brand the site, on which Mahjong and other casual games are popular.

Direct links to FunTown and Yahoo! Taiwan will be featured throughout the content on Wretch.

FunTown is one of the most popular online games sites in Taiwan, generating large revenues from its Mahjong offerings. GigaMedia, which also operates an ISP in Taiwan, will place banner advertisements alongside game offerings and messenger homepages.

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