Individuals are finally taking over the web. Today over 50% of online pages are now personal pages and for the first time this year social media even overtook pornography.
In a recent Online Journalism lecture Antony Mayfield from iCrossing (a leader in Search Engine Marketing) hit us with some pretty impressive statistics. There are roughly 1.4 billion people online with 400 million members of social networks. There over a trillion web sites tracked by Google and ten hours of video footage is uploaded onto Youtube every minute. Who are all these people producing all this content? The people formerly known as the audience.
Clearly as I am blogging, I should talk about one of the biggest forms of user produced content, the blog itself.
In an even more recent lecture from Shane Richmond, the Communities Editor of the Telegraph, we were told that their most successful blogs were not chasing the mainstream audiences, but the niche, focused blogs that build audiences at title and even article level. He wasn't just referring to Telegraph journalist's blogs, but more importantly the user blogs part of their My Telegraph site that allows anyone to start blogging on the Telegraph's site. It was also clear that unless you blog regularly, its not worth blogging. This can be witnessed even when looking at more mainstream blogs for example Ricky Gervais's Blog that keeps its high popularity with constant posts including numerous links, multimedia and amusing anecdotes.
In this new world full of virtual conversation it is Google that rules. It doesn't just have an 80% market share, but effectively defines the way in which we know and use the web today. The reason for this is that Google puts the user first. And guess what? Google loves blogs. There are many reasons why, including that it fits their business model and that blogs are constantly updated and full of archived information, but also because blogs are considered one of the most honest resources on the net. This brings me onto one important factor when considering user content, which is moderation.
Many people argue the web is full of rubbish user content. Shane Richmond argued that it might be rubbish or it might just be not be for you, which is a fair point. Yet one thing that is clear in this era of necessary constant contribution, immediate updating and even possible future correction, is that sometimes content is let loose on the web at the cost of accuracy. Not only that, but despite re-editing, the idea of yesterday's news being tomorrow's fish and chip paper isn't true anymore as this content is effectively out there forever, rubbish or no. Sometimes this need for speed, as it were, can even have more serious dangers such as legal implications.
Many argue that it is the journalists and media that have allowed the user conversation to flourish online, but the conversation has always happened, instead it is the journalist that has joined the conversation. Richmond said that as journalists we should not expect the audience to change, but we are the ones that have to change the way we think and evolve in this modern world. Clearly in this epoch of more freedom and individual expression online I agree we need to let the conversation continue, but as long as its not at the total expense of accuracy and decency.
Photo courtesy of kekuri:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kekuri/1116048366/
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