OpenSource Connections
Category: Uncategorized
Reuters reported this morning that the number of contributors to many Web 2.0 sites such as YouTube and Flickr is much smaller than the number of people who come to look at the content generated. With the glaring exception of Wikipedia, the average tends to run around 500 viewers for each contributor. At first glance, this might seem like a shock given that Web 2.0 applications are supposed to make it easier for the user to participate and contribute, but further examination shows that maybe its not surprising after all.
First, let us look at the ease with which users can add content. The original “category killer” was the blog, where within minutes, people would be able to set up their own commentary site and become the next Bill Kristol or Fred Barnes. While creation of blogs continues at a rapid pace, Technorati reports that there are 1.5 million posts daily to a population of approximately 57 million blogs, or about a 2% contribution rate. That is for a medium which requires no additional equipment besides a computer. Once you add in digital equipment necessary to create the media for many Web 2.0 sites, it is not surprising that the contribution rate drops.
Secondly, it seems that human nature is a contributing factor to this phenomenon. Garret Hardins
Tragedy of the Commons succinctly explains what is happening here. Any time you have a contribution to the public good (as the site owners would argue these sites are), many more people will take advantage of the public good than will contribute to it. These “free riders” are happy to take part and take advantage of the common good, but few will pony up resources to keep it going for everyone else. That is why public radio has to have fundraising drives all of the time and why street performers only have the scantest of change in their tip jars.
Does this mean that the Web 2.0 sites should pack up and go home? No. Aside from the most altruistic of creators, the purpose of these sites is profit. Profit is generated on these sites almost exclusively from advertising revenue. What draws advertising revenue? Visits to the site. So, even if these sites have an incredibly skewed proportion of contributors to viewers, they still have viewers, and the contributors are free staff, meaning that the cost of content generation is zero. One of the biggest variable costs in a fixed media such as a newspaper, the staff needed to create the content, is eliminated in Web 2.0 sites. As Flickr and YouTube have proven, it does not take many content creators to drive an enormous amount of traffic.