"Personalization"...seriously.

So, consider (my site) or Wiki Answers, Yahoo Answers, etc. Do you really need a million answers to a question? Nope, you're not going to read them. Do you need the right answer? The one from somebody like you, who's trusted, honest and genuinely wants to help you? You betcha ;)

Expand on this: which of the top N q&a sites allow you to filter by your friend list...? Answer: none. Taken a step further, it reduces the noise of the general site populace, and instead, makes it more "you centric" around your network, people with similar interests, etc.

At launch, you have to go broad to gain traction, however, to attain critical mass of "shoe lovers"...you need to offer some way of connecting those shoe lovers amidst all the non shoe fanatics on the site.

Of course, since my answers ties into my own "strategic thinking" for my hobby site...well, I'm biased ;)

posted December 3, 2008

I agree that there are a LOT of bad answers here on LinkedIn, and there are just as many good ones, with one always deserving of Best selection. The problem is that all user generated content must be edited by a qualified subject expert to be of real value, IMHO.

In my writing for the New York Times website at About.com, I am involved in their roll-out for testing of user generated content. My work is largely self-edited, with stringent format and quality requirements. Then, it is selectively edited by my Channel Editor in New York. The new user generated items are slated to come through me for the Real Estate Business site. I will be looking at every content item before I release it to go live.

I'm sure it will add to my workload, but it won't take as long to review it as it would to have written it. I hope to get valid and useful content as user answers to questions, reviews of their experiences with products and services, and just commentary and opinion. Only with this edit by someone with the knowledge to judge content quality will we get user generated content of value.

Links:

• http://realestate.about.com

posted December 3, 2008

hello karen -

i think the future of user-generated content is going to be in video games. you already see it with titles like 'spore' and 'little big planet' or the map editor you get in 'halo 3'. i think that people realized that users don't want to just be users; they want to be part of the experience.

so what does that mean for blogging or marketing? it hasn't been done full-force, but a few companies for some ad campaigns have asked for user-generated commercials (or at least ideas, for the super bowl). right now even, windows is running their "i'm a PC" ads which feature videos from their community. i can see blogging -- sites like the unofficial apple weblog, or joystiq -- opening up their channels for 'celebrity' posts from users that aren't officially bloggers, or at least bloggers for their sites. users want to feel a part of what they participate in.

[slight tangent..] some things, like questions about "what causes pinkeye?" are best left to other people. i look around yahoo! answers sometimes and wonder why in the world people would post some of their questions on there rather than going to the main page and doing a normal web search.

one of the best ways, though, as has been mentioned for finding information that you'd at least be interested in is information that your friends have. this is where i think social networking sites are really important. a site like twitter where you can ask, "does anyone know a good __?" can give you almost instant feedback from your friends and close personal contacts.

i don't think that there's a magic 'easy' button that's going to automatically pick things. "hey, this is good." and with companies hiring people to 'game the system' and provide false (positive) reviews on information or product reviews -- there's always going to be that question of, "it says 9.0 out of 10, but how do i know this is really useful?"

that's how i see user-generated content going.

posted December 3, 2008

I guess there are differing viewpoints here and there is some great debate between wisdom of the crowd advocate and wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and author and commentator Andrew Keen who claims the growing number of web contribitors is creating a "cult of the amateur" and reducing value in content. There are a few videos of this on Youtube "Wales and Keen" that are worth watching.

Maybe a glimpse of the future is hidden in your question in that our trust will be in the sources that earn it and give us relevance and context. Tools may arise that llow us to do this.

Without this it is really just opinion. As a community we are also more sceptical of information. Baby boomers and their parent in general were more trusting of what they read in the media verbatim. Gen X and to an even further extent Y are more likely to triangulate sources before deciding on what is "right"

posted December 3, 2008

User Generated Content will keep growing as slowly but surely the tools of self-publication go into the mainstream - blogging, image uploading, video uploading etc.

And quicker, easier ways are being evolved all the time - microblogging, uploading Qik video from your mobile, blogging via Tumblr - all ways you can contribute and respond to other content more easily, and via your mobile as well as your computer.

Navigation for me comes through filters - either automated, or more often than not, through human connections. I rarely use search any more, because it's quicker and easier to go to the people in my Twitter network I consider experts and ask their opinions and recommendations.

The same is true of the other channels I use - and it's important to remember that we can control the flood. I choose which social networks to belong to, and how much interaction I allow, and the same is true of Flickr, Youtube etc...

It simply involves an evolution of our own thought process to begin to better adapt to the information flood - being more selective in who we add, or which RSS feed we subscribe to, and being more selective when we review them every so often...I have a constant struggle to try and reduce by RSS subscriptions down below the current 600 or so...For every 2 I delete, I spot someone else to add!

Links:

• http://www.thewayoftheweb.net

posted December 5, 2008

I'm going to be a bit of a devil's advocate - the answer really is 'it depends'

AGGREGATE user generated content is very valuable - especially in evaluation and opinion areas - eg movie ratings on yahoo or product ratings from users on amazon or cnet. These have enough volume that the aggregate opinion is better than a professional judgment (seriously - if you know the topic and dig deep these kinds of ratings are the best way to do an evaluation). but it has to be smart aggregation. giving me a list of 10,000 comments is useless - now all I have is a pile of dross in which to search for my diamond. But take a look at the new New York Times comments - in particular the organizational tabs - there are editor picked comments - and user picked comments and I think a third way to organize. Again, because of volume, the user picked commetns are great. In fact, the user picked commetns are always better then the editor picked ones AND they are often better than the article!

But non-aggregatged user generated content is a WASTE OF TIME. One serious improvement LinkedIn needs for example is better rating in this very system we are using and in fact they should REQUIRE a best answer selection from the questioner and also try to get a best answer selection from the q&a viewers.

As for navigation - if you don't build in the solution as mentioned above then you shouldn't even do the user generated content...

posted December 5, 2008

I wish there was a way to flag answers (on linkedin, at least) as 'blindingly wrong' (grin).

In other words, *trust factor* - I see so many bad answers to questions, that I shudder at the thought of people following the bad advice.

I do realize that good or great answers (SOMETIMES) get flagged as such, which is less-than-half the equation.

My other wish: that linkedin question askers would be somehow forced to close a question and flag good/great answers. That at least would build up the trust factor, plus reward the thoughtful for answering.

posted December 3, 2008

In response to Mike Truese's wish about being about to flag answers. Linked in could ad a small application, such as is available on Amazon.com when people rate product reviews, or even available at IMDB when people rate movie reviews, as helpful or not. The feature will give an average rating, typically something out of 10, and then will list how many people that average is based on.

posted December 3, 2008

I love Jeremy Goodrich answer.

posted December 3, 2008

In short: increased speed + mobility

How to navigate?: tagging / listening tools; i.e. personalized webcrawler (technorati-like) / feedreader

posted December 3, 2008

I am not sure you can say there is going to be an end to user generated content, but there is going to be a change, or better put an evolution.

With all the information clutter, there is going to be a huge out cry for standards and guidelines to help people navigate through the noise.

I think a lot of this can be improved with more advanced internal search features. Ones that incorporate taxonomy, and really good search refinement, which includes series of keywords ect....

This of course would mean that people would have to be very specific about how they write and tag content to ensure they are reaching their target market.

I could go on for some time about this and the new theories that involve the semantic web, though in short I say no...this is not the end of user generated content.

Links:

• http://www.webmarketingcommunications.com

posted December 3, 2008

Agree with Jeremy,

But I say Relevancy before Personalization (causality ?)

With all semantic learnings/innovations, the content will be understood better, tools will be created to seperate the noise from the actual relevant content.

posted December 4, 2008