Here’s part three of our white paper What Exactly is Social Media. This part deals with user developed activity in this space - or user generated content and distribution.

3. User developed activity in this space:

* Users creating and sharing videos
* Users creating and sharing images
* Users creating and sharing polls
* Users creating and sharing mash ups (taking two or more pieces of content or function to a new one)
* Users creating and sharing audio
* Users creating and sharing text
* Users aggregating things they are interested in and sharing these

Examples of the impact of user generation.

Google searches every piece of content on the web (provided it is not password protected).

It does not distinguish between user generated and professionally created content.

Users have already created more content than professionals. The web is tipping towards UGC as its dominant mode.

There are 80M+ blogs – serving every imaginable niche.

There has been more content uploaded to youtube in the last year than has been broadcast in the whole of TV history.

We are shifting towards a culture of participation rather than passive consumption.

Models which enable and encourage user contribution are effective in increasing participation (giving users a sense of ownership of the outcome with the value inherent in that).

And by creating more content than professional teams can ever hope to match the result is that more content on the subject is now discoverable. The more discoverable, the more people who share the interest will be drawn to it.

Isn’t the vast majority of UGC rubbish?

This is only ever true from a traditional broadcast perspective.

Quality is defined by attracting mass – but in the longtail world of the internet there is more value outside of the ‘mass’ hits – typically 85% of the value resides outside the hit end of the scale.

If I make something to entertain myself and a small group of friends, it isn’t meant for you or the majority. It shouldn’t be judged against the production standards of content which is intended to be a hit.

The fact that it is about my friends and I, or is particularly relevant to my friends and I, makes it valuable to us. Relevance beats quality every time.

We’d rather watch it than an episode of Emmerdale – even if by objective evaluation it isn’t as ‘good’.

Be less concerned by the value an outsider may get from viewing what a small community create together, and more concerned by the value those participating get from it. Subjective experience in this world of ultra-niches is more important than objective comparison.

And there are many many more UGC iterations of content, than pro.

Part four tomorrow!

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