Entries tagged with “user-generated content” from Tools of Change for Publishing
Redefining Professional Content and Accepting Digital's Limitations
Mac Slocum
November 18, 2008
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Scott Karp expands on claims that Hulu is nipping at YouTube's heels with 10 pointed observations about the future of media. Karp's full list is recommended reading, but the following points inspired a few thoughts of my own:
1 . Professional content still has A LOT more value than "user-generated content."
This bodes well for publishers, studios and other companies that have attained professional status, but there's another aspect that deserves mention: The concept of professional in the digital realm is transforming from exclusive to inclusive.
Under traditional models with limited channels, a professional was someone who achieved a certain title through luck, talent and output; the content produced by these people was deemed professional by default. But digital platforms allow consumers to choose material on their own terms, and with that comes a shift of the professional label from job association to consumer impression. If consumers deem a piece of "user-generated" content to be professional, then it is (to those particular consumers). And if enough consumers assign the same value to the same content, advertisers will eventually get on board. We're in the very early stages of this professional transition (and the ensuing debate), but I'm excited to see how a reimiagining that includes both traditional companies and upstart professionals plays out.
8. Most analogue media businesses, when fully transitioned to the web, will likely bear little resemblance to the original businesses.
Karp summarizes something that's been gnawing at me for months: the old models just don't hold up in the digital world. Distribution went from narrow and expensive to wide and cheap; audiences once limited to specific channels have dispersed across a broad landscape; Web advertising revenue will not replace traditional ad revenue; and, after 10-plus years of Web use, consumers now expect basic digital content to be free. Fighting against these changes delays the inevitable, but acceptance opens up enormous opportunity to build leaner businesses that use content, community and the Web's efficiences to sell scarce products (i.e. targeted research, consulting, education, events, experiences, and access).
Maintaining a Web Community is as Hard as Building One
Mac Slocum
September 9, 2008
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Finding the balance between the content you take from users and the value you give back is tricky business, especially since "value" and "money" are rarely synonymous in the user-generated space. Yelp, a volunteer-driven hub of local business and restaurant reviews, is one community that seems to have struck the right chord with its most active members. From the New York Times:
Yelp identifies its most consistently praised, prolific and witty reviewers as members of the "Yelp Elite Squad." The company says it looks for those possessing "a certain je ne sais quoi -- we call it Yelpitude." I find that it saves time to read the reviews submitted by the Elite Squad and ignore the rest.
Singling out the best and the brighting contributors in the early days of a community is putting the cart before the horse. You need critical mass -- or a route toward critical mass -- before the natural audience strata appear. Nonetheless, it's smart to develop a notoriety plan in the off chance you catch lightning in a bottle. This could be a complicated mechanism like Yelp's Elite Squad or Slashdot's moderation system, or it could be driven by organic relationships between community moderators and promising users.
Note: Some community systems associate coy user types with users who've met certain thresholds -- i.e. post 100 comments and become a vaunted "Senior Member." Auto-generated user types have a degree of value, but a true notoriety initiative requires a lot more effort.
Even with adequate notoriety tools, the most successful communities still suffer from turnover and diminished interest among key users. When I developed my first few communities I mistakenly assumed that once the audience was in place, the natural organization within the community would replace my development efforts. But that's not how it works. Most members have a lifecycle within a community -- it's a linear progression with an endpoint, not a constant user pattern. It's important to acknowledge this natural line and counter inevitable user drift with ongoing user development.
Ruling: Consider Fair Use Before Issuing Takedowns
Peter Brantley
August 22, 2008
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A fairly significant ruling came down Wednesday in Lenz v. Universal, a rather infamous case where Universal Music Publishing Group issued a takedown against a YouTube video of a young child dancing to a song in the background -- a song in which Universal maintained some rights. Universal later acknowledged that this was a fair use of the music, an incidental use, but the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) pursued the aggressive use of Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedowns. The court ruled in the EFF's favor, and it should have significant outcomes. The EFF writes:
Universal moved to dismiss the case, claiming, among other things, that it had no obligation to consider whether [Stephanie] Lenz's use was fair before sending its notice. The judge firmly rejected Universal's theory:
" [A] fair use is a lawful use of a copyright. Accordingly, in order for a copyright owner to proceed under the DMCA with "a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law," the owner must evaluate whether the material makes fair use of the copyright."
Universal had insisted that copyright owners could not efficiently police copyright infringement if they had to consider whether a give use was fair. Not so, said the judge:
"[I]n the majority of cases, a consideration of fair use prior to issuing a takedown notice will not be so complicated as to jeopardize a copyright owner's ability to respond rapidly to potential infringements. The DMCA already requires copyright owners to make an initial review of the potentially infringing material prior to sending a takedown notice; indeed, it would be impossible to meet any of the requirements of Section 512(c) without doing so. A consideration of the applicability of the fair use doctrine simply is part of that initial review."
Web Community Management Tips
Mac Slocum
August 4, 2008
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Whether intentional or not, Bob Garfield from NPR's "On the Media" reopened an old wound when he questioned the need for user comments on newspaper Web sites.
The "comments issue" is polarizing. Die-hard community advocates believe comments are an integral part of the online experience. Detractors draw a straight line between user comments and the apocalypse. It's a contentious topic with very little middle ground.
For our purposes, there's no point in looking at all the arguments and counter-arguments. The comments debate has been going on for at least 10 years (much longer, if you count Usenet), and it will persist as long as trolls continue to lower the conversational bar. That's just the way it is.
However, this latest flare up offers an opportunity to redirect the focus to some of the time-tested best practices for managing Web communities. Derek Powazek (whom we recently interviewed for an unrelated piece) offers an excellent starting point with "10 Ways Newspapers Can Improve Comments," and Cory Doctorow's "How To Keep Hostile Jerks From Taking Over Your Online Community" is also recommended reading.
I've also picked up a few bits of wisdom from my own experiences as a community manager:
- Nurture the Good -- The majority of people want to do the right thing. They want to engage in fruitful and fulfilling conversations. They want to build and protect special communities. These are the people you focus on.
- Push Trolls to the Margins -- All popular communities will eventually suffer through a troll infestation. The trick is the minimize a troll's impact by not taking the bait. Moderators should never engage in a public argument, and key community members should be encouraged via private messages and back channels to ignore troll attacks. A marginalized troll is a useless troll, and they know it.
- Share Ownership -- I focused on inclusiveness in my first community because I was unsure about my own voice and opinions. In a serendipitous twist, the "we're all equal and we're all in this together" perspective led to a shared sense of ownership. It took a while for folks to buy what I was selling, but a consistent focus on collaboration and equality eventually led to individual responsibility and effective self-policing. I've used this same technique on subsequent communities and the results have always been positive.
- Calm by Example -- Experienced community managers know that the Web is a fickle place; today's egregious opinion often evaporates within a matter of days. A measured community manager allows fiery debates to run their course without spilling out of control, and on those rare occasions when guidance is required, a calm force is far more powerful.
What community tips do you have? Please share your thoughts in the comments area (unless you're a troll).
TOC Recommended Reading
Mac Slocum
July 31, 2008
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This is Not a Comment (Derek Powazek, Powazek.com)
Chastising all internet commenters for the actions of the loudest, craziest ones is no different that swearing off all newspapers because of Jason Blair.
Silicon Valley's benevolent dictatorship (Rebecca MacKinnon, RConversation)
The guys running Google, Apple, Microsoft, and many other companies represented at the Fortune Brainstorm are the benevolent dictators of the global information and communications system. But can we assume they will always be benevolent? What happens when they roll out services in not-so-benevolent authoritarian regimes?
Once More With Feeling: The LATBR Publishes Its Last (Kassia Krozser, Booksquare)
... I still maintain that a book review section in a major newspaper should be reflective of the subscriber base, even if it's trying to maintain a certain level of discourse; you have to bring the larger audience in, even a little bit, if you want to expose your conversation beyond the choir.
Why I Joined the POD People (Richard Grayson, Quarterly Conversation)
Eventually, as print-on-demand technology improves in quality and costs shrink, trade publishers will probably rely on POD for all their books, just as some academic publishers have begun to do. Trade publishers waste a lot of money (and trees) by publishing copies of books, even bestsellers in fourth or fifth editions, that never get sold; no matter how many print runs, publishers always seem to have books left over. After my first book was remaindered I bought 400 copies of my first book for a nickel a copy, then discovered the cost of storing them was so expensive that I ended up throwing dozens of copies into a Miami dumpster.
Photography Up, Photojournalists Down
Peter Brantley
July 30, 2008
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In a Columbia Journalism Review essay, Alissa Quart looks at the future of photojournalism, which is not unlike that of journalists now that everyone has a camera in their hands:
While professional photographers are suffering, news photography and photography of all kinds is flourishing. Citizens around the world can cheaply photograph and distribute images of their own countries and cities, places like Dhaka and Freetown. Citizen journalism projects like Rising Voices teach photography in Africa and elsewhere. Local image-makers challenge both the valor and necessity of the American or European photographer shooting in a foreign clime, a model that has a certain amount of voyeuristic baggage, as the critic W. J. T. Mitchell has written -- a dynamic where a "damaged, victimized, and powerless individual" is "taken" by a photographer who is a "relatively privileged observer, often acting as the 'eye of power.' " Instead, we will have amateur photographers -- some lucky people at the right awful place at the right awful time (Nigerians who are at the next explosion of a pipeline, say). And I hope that innately gifted photographers will emerge as well -- a Chinese Kratochvil, a Nigerian Gilles Peress.
What Makes a Collaborative Writing Project Successful?
Liza Daly
May 13, 2008
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Penguin's collaborative writing experiment A Million Penguins was launched in February 2007 and completed in March 2007. This month saw its final scholarly assessment published in a research report out of De Montfort University in Leicester, UK.
The results? Terrible, according to Gawker, echoing a consensus that the project failed as literature. As a study of online behavior, though, it's quite fascinating, and the research paper describes examples of all types of user contributions, from the grandiose and self-serving to the quietly constructive.
But if "every book needs its author," game-like fiction has been shown to be more amenable to collaboration. Each of Penguin's We Tell Stories pieces was co-written by interactive developers and a novelist. This month, the Guardian has launched a participatory interactive fiction project.
Although technically a type of computer game, interactive fiction has a long association with print authors, starting with the commercially successful adaptation of Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1984). In 2003 Adam Cadre (Ready, Okay!, HarperCollins, 2000) wrote the game Narcolepsy incorporating 12 dream sequences written by different authors (of which I was one). In a more experimental vein, the recent UpRightDown project released its first story, which generated submissions in multiple media, including some interactive works.
One lesson from these experiments is that while a work of fiction may not need a single author, it does need a single editor or authority to weave together disparate contributions and reject the obvious vandals. A unified final work has the potential to be a marketable product rather than a research project. (On the other hand, if the printed German Wikipedia sells, all bets are off.) Scale is important as well: two or even three dozen contributors are probably manageable; A Million Penguins had 1,700.
The Guardian's interactive fiction project is being managed using wiki software at textadventure.org.uk. The organizers are soliciting both programmers and non-technical writers. It is scheduled to run through at least the end of May.
News Roundup: Kindle 2.0 Speculation, Wikipedia: The Book, "Dilbert" Embraces User-Generated Content, Mobile Audiobook Downloads, Tracking Drafts and Revisions
Mac Slocum
April 25, 2008
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Ars Technica speculates on what the Kindle 2.0 might provide:
... the general hardware configuration appears to be here for a while. The fact that they're still selling the current version also suggests that they have committed to this design in all its white-plastic glory. In the long term, there's still the option of moving some of the awkwardly-placed controls and of improving the E Ink screen (color and improved contrast or faster response times, seem inevitable) ... All of this leaves changes to the software as the most likely candidates for 2.0 improvements. Realistically, we could only infer what Amazon considered to an acceptable interface based on what was released as 1.0. If this doesn't reflect what they "wanted to release in the first place," then all bets on what may change are off.
German Wikipedia Coming in Book Form
Bertelsmann is putting 25,000 German Wikipedia entries into The One-Volume Wikipedia Encyclopedia. From the New York Times:
Bertelsmann says the project should not be judged as a re-creation in book form of what appears online, but rather as an attempt to harness the collective wisdom of Wikipedia’s users. (Continue reading ...)
"Dilbert" Embraces User-Generated Content
"Dilbert" creator Scott Adams and his distributor, United Media, are supporting user-generated content through Dilbert.com. Visitors can rewrite captions and redistribute the results, and the full "Dilbert" archive will eventually be available for free. From Webware:
I asked Adams why he and United Media are opening up the Dilbert intellectual property like this, and he sent me a response by email: "We're accepting the realities of IP on the Internet, and trying to get ahead of the curve. People already alter Dilbert strips and distribute them. If we make it easy and legal to do so, and drive more traffic to Dilbert.com in the process, everyone wins. Plus it's a lot of fun to see what people come up with in the mashups."
UK Service Brings Audiobook Downloads to Mobile Phones
UK-based GoSpoken has partnered with Random House to make 50 audiobook titles available for purchase through the GoSpoken mobile download service. GoSpoken is currently aimed at early adopter UK residents who have broadband-capable cellphones (specifically, HSDPA-enabled) and mobile data plans. (Continue reading ...)
Writing and Tracking through Subversion
Programmers use version control systems to track and monitor code revisions. Writers can bring the same functionality to their drafts by following Rachel Greenham's Mac OS X Subversion tutorial. (Continue reading ...)
"Dilbert" Embraces User-Generated Content
Peter Brantley
April 23, 2008
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"Dilbert" creator Scott Adams and his distributor, United Media, are supporting user-generated content through Dilbert.com. Visitors can rewrite captions and redistribute the results, and the full "Dilbert" archive will eventually be available for free. From Webware:
I asked Adams why he and United Media are opening up the Dilbert intellectual property like this, and he sent me a response by email: "We're accepting the realities of IP on the Internet, and trying to get ahead of the curve. People already alter Dilbert strips and distribute them. If we make it easy and legal to do so, and drive more traffic to Dilbert.com in the process, everyone wins. Plus it's a lot of fun to see what people come up with in the mashups.""
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