Heard about this story on CNET Buzz Out Loud podcast the other day. According to a survey conducted by Hitwise, most of so called Web 2.0 users are just watchers, popular Web 2.0 sites such as YouTube and Flickr have only less than 1 percent of users who actually contribute to the sites (actively). Wikipedia, meanwhile, has a bit more than 4% participation rate. And according to the study, most of those content contributors belong to age group of 35 to 44. You can read the whole article here.
We all know that Web 2.0 is about interactivity, about user participation, about community. So the finding of this study will definitely dismay those Web 2.0 believers. Actually, not long ago, a few mates and I were thinking about starting a social shopping network website, where users can share their shopping experience and find the best bargain in town. And the most difficult question faces us was the same , how to get users to participate? 15 mins of fame, yes maybe on YouTube, but social shopping network? being a star shopper ... sounds very uncool to me. We tried to hang on to this idea for a while, then got distracted by other things.
Some people may call this the bust of Web 2.0. To me this is more a reality checking process and is beneficial to the whole Web 2.0 thing. This is kind of studies will cool down the Web 2.0 hype and make the industry more rational. Just imagine the hype we gave to those Web 1.x dot coms, if it was then, our social shopping network would easily get millions of dollars from VC and I can simply retire young and travel around the world promote world peace. :-) ... sometimes just fews years make a huge difference.
People may ask, why so? Why the participation rates are so low, even for those high profile websites? And why Wikipedia has got a higher rate than YouTube and Flickr? I think this is still due to the usability of those applications. Those Web 2.0 applications, even they are much more convenient to use than those came before them, to actually participate they still require a fair bit of effort. YouTube, for example, you still have to download your video from your video capture devices (be it a mobile phone, dc or dv) to your PC and then upload them to YouTube. With Flickr the same, you need to download and then upload. And you must have an Internet connection. With real life social network, if I'd like to share a video/picture with someone sitting next to me, I can simply just show them on my mobile phone (or dc, or dv). The inability to participate whenever, wherever is the obstacle that prevent the most of use from actually contributing content.
Imagine that Flickr allows you to send photos as MMS, or emails, and some robots at Flickr's end will automatically process those MMS and emails, extract the photos and put them to the right place ... does this sound like a more convenient way of participate in photo sharing? For me it does. Or you saw some fantastic buckling on street while you are traveling in Europe, you record it on your mobile phone, and send it to YouTube straightway, that's something I'd really like to do.
Technologies which enable those functions are out there, but they are still not good enough. Photos taken by most mobile phones are just good enough to be viewable, same goes with the mobile phone video. The last time I checked, sending high quality photos and videos over a mobile network is still painfully slow. Mobiles phones today is not geared enough for those kind of usages, and those who are really geared up, they look very nerdy and they are very costly (at least in Australia). So until one day, we have an Internet where we can participate wherever we want, whenever we want, the participation rate will be low. With the pace technologies advance nowadays, in few years, this could become reality, and we shall call it Web 3.0.
