Viewing User Generated Content seventh most popular online activity in UK …

Posted on March 21, 2007
Filed Under Advertising, Analytics, Mobile, Newspapers, Search, Technology, Tools and Services, Traffic, Travel, Trends, User Generated | Leave a Comment

iLevel Internet Usage statistics - the “Activities on the Web” category is quite interesting - UGC (I guess this covers MySpace etc. as well as reading comments on news sites etc.) is seventh most popular category:

Using e-mail 25.00 million Nov-06 BMRB Internet Monitor
Sourcing Info on Activities/Interests 21.27 million Nov-06 BMRB Internet Monitor
Making Travel Plans 17.05 million Nov-06 BMRB Internet Monitor
Looking at Cinema/Theatre/Concert Listings 14.88 million Nov-06 BMRB Internet Monitor
Listening to Music 12.12 million Nov-06 BMRB Internet Monitor
Looking at Job Opportunities 11.59 million Nov-06 BMRB Internet Monitor
Looking at User Generated Content 11.13 million Nov-06 BMRB Internet Monitor
Downloading Music (whether paid or free) 9.98 million Nov-06 BMRB Internet Monitor
Instant Messaging 9.41 million Nov-06 BMRB Internet Monitor
To watch video clips 9.30 million Nov-06 BMRB Internet Monitor
To play games 9.05 million Nov-06 BMRB Internet Monitor

Tagging and The Scotsman Digital Archive

Posted on February 27, 2007
Filed Under Advertising, Digital Archive, Digitisation, Future, Newspapers, Paid Content, Tools and Services, User Generated, del.icio.us | Leave a Comment

Following on from some of the issues raised in “When tags work and when they don’t: Amazon and LibraryThing“.  

The team behind the Scotsman Digital Archive - a searchable archive of The Scotsman newspaper from 1817-1950 developed during 2005 - http://archive.scotsman.com/ - developed functionality that allows users to “clip” and “tag” articles of interest that they might want to get back to later.

Scotdman ArchiveThis is important in the context of a relatively large repository - and especially important when searching across text extracted via OCR from historical material. 

The tagging functionality allows users to organise, group and locate articles easily and was quickly adopted by the user community as the benefits were substantial and obvious.

Clearly this tagging adds a great deal of value to the archive, providing some structure and pathways to difficult to find or significant material that could ultimately benefit the wider community of users.

The next obvious stage of development would have been to develop the social/community side of this by allowing users to share their tags with other users, make them public and connect with each other.  This reinforces the principle that the best way to get users to add value to data is to do it in such a way that they don’t realise they are doing so - I guess this is the same as saying provide a clear incentive (see Amazon, Google Maps, Listal.com etc).  It also goes without saying that it should be as pain-free as possible.

The other point to note here is that in certain circumstances you can get users to tag for the greater good - and not just as a by-product of some personal benefit.  You can see this in del.icio.us where individuals can develop into experts through their consistent and regular tagging of material on specific subject areas.  These experts can eventually develop a “network” of like minded indivuduals and attract “fans” who track what they are tagging via RSS.  This network effect is one of the most powerful aspects of del.icio.us.  The profile that the experts receive from their peers within the community is a great incentive to continue tagging. 

[Disclosure:  Please note author is former General Manager of scotsman.com.]

Interactive TV lets viewers edit shows

Posted on December 19, 2006
Filed Under Broadband, Technology, User Generated | Leave a Comment

New interactive TV service being trialled will allow users to set preferences and even determine the outcome of programmes.

“The concept, based on technology developed by BT and a variety of broadcasting and content companies, lets the viewer structure news bulletins, documentaries and even dramas to suit their preferences, initially using text messages, though eventually through remote controls”.

Start-up will seek out content being used without permission

Posted on December 19, 2006
Filed Under Copyright, Digitisation, Future, Newspapers, Paid Content, Search, User Generated, Weblogs | Leave a Comment

Start-up founded by ex-Yahoo and Verisign execs will help content owners work out if there material is being used withlout permission. Might not be welcomed by social networking / blooging sites:

Attributor analyzes the content of clients, who could range from individuals to big media companies, using a technique known as “digital fingerprinting,” which determines unique and identifying characteristics of content. It uses these digital fingerprints to search its index of the Web for the content. The company claims to be able to spot a customer’s content based on the appearance of as little as a few sentences of text or a few seconds of audio or video. It will provide customers with alerts and a dashboard of identified uses of their content on the Web and the context in which it is used.

And.

Its co-founders, former Yahoo Inc. executive Jim Brock, and Jim Pitkow, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who has sold companies to Google and VeriSign Inc., claim to have cracked the thorny computer-science problem of scouring the entire Web by using undisclosed technology to efficiently process and comb through chunks of content. The company says it will have over 10 billion Web pages in its index before the end of this month.

Web tailored

Posted on May 10, 2005
Filed Under Newspapers, User Generated, Weblogs | Leave a Comment

Interesting NYT piece about Gawker media.
Link: A Blog Revolution? Get a Grip - New York Times.

Read more

The Convergence of Online and Offline Editorial

Posted on December 2, 2003
Filed Under Journalism, Paid Content, RSS, User Generated | Leave a Comment

Another good article the Onine Journalism Review on “Moving Online into the Newsroom“.

To the leaders of these organizations, the writing is on the wall: Print circulation is down, online use is up. Newspaper readers are going online for their news, and often they’re going to portals like Yahoo — not to their local paper — for updates.

Rusty Coats, director of new media at MORI Research, hits the nail on the head with:

Papers everywhere have been grappling for years with the fact that — for an ever-growing part of the population — digital media just works better than analog media, Coats said.”Readership studies show “it’s not startribune.com that’s replacing the Star Tribune. It is online as a medium that is replacing print as a medium for some people,” he said.

Blogroll


Categories


Archives