User content a new challenge
User content a new challenge
Michael Sainsbury
The Australian
13jul06
WHEN France’s World Cup football captain Zinedine Zidane headbutted Italian defender Marco Materazzi in the final of the competition on Monday morning, the incident was quickly made available on the internet’s hottest site: Youtube.com.
Some time in the past six months Youtube - which allows users to upload any and every type of video clip - roared past MySpace (owned by The Australian’s publisher, News Corporation) as the web’s most talked about destination.
This week, Youtube reported that users were downloading 80 million videos each day. The site is part of the seemingly unstoppable internet trend towards user-generated content.
Although community sites have been around for a few years, they are suddenly the next big thing on the web, part of what industry watchers are calling Web 2.0.
User-generated sites are proliferating: there are professional networks such as Linkedin and the recently started Sensis site LinkMe, movie and music sites where users rate content, online citizen contribution to big news organisations and the vast spread of blogsphere.
Now social networking sites are booming, fuelled by faster broadband access technologies that allow users to view content-heavy sites laden with picture and videos without waiting an eternity for the download.
It’s not only News but rivals such as MSN - in Australia represented by the Ninemsn joint venture between Microsoft and Publishing & Broadcasting Ltd - Yahoo and Telstra that are getting into the game. MySpace, with more than 90million users, recently localised its site in Australia and since then has seen a surge in interest.
News Interactive says 1.1 million Australian users had uploaded their details to the site, with about 10,000 signing up each day.
Director of network content and services at Ninemsn Jane O’Connell said MSN’s Spaces site has 1.6million Australian users of its 50 million across the world.
So far BigPond’s community networking site is called BigBlog but has attracted only about 10,000 users.
“User-generated content is attracting a lot of interest and attention at the moment because it’s an area that exploits the ability of the individual to tell his or her story, or demonstrate their creativity to
a potentially massive audience,” Telstra spokesman Craig Middleton said.
Many young users such as Sydney’s Natalie Woodhill, 14, use MySpace alongside MSN’s ubiquitous Instant Messenger, showing a sharp ability to mix and match service from different providers.
Natalie said she joined the site because her friends are on it: “not so many friends from school but friends from outside school”.
Business interest in the sector was sparked last year when Rupert Murdoch, a long-time web sceptic, put his new-found faith to the test, paying $US580 million for MySpace’s parent company Intermix.
Mr Murdoch recently suggested that his investment had already increased tenfold.
The big question is: How will these sites leverage their millions of users and visitors to make money?
While Youtube founders Chad Hurley, 29, and Steve Chen, 27, work on an online advertising model for their site, MySpace reckons it has figured it out.
“MySpace does big programs with big advertisers, which are going to pay us money to do so,” said Nic Jones, who until he resigned yesterday ran News Interactive.
“Now there might be other spin-offs as well. There may be events you can charge people for but the basic business model is the client spending money: either advertising or building profiles.”
Mr Jones believed the unique nature of community sites led to a different tweak on the more traditional internet advertising model.
“Take your mind away from banner and buttons and start thinking about profiles: clients set themselves or their product up as a profile within itself.
“When you have got the demand and traffic, we could just open our doors and get everybody to say: ‘I have an ad here and an ad there’,” Mr Jones said.
“It’s important to do some groundbreaking stuff and showcase some really big ideas.”
Still, there is a darker side to the easy-access community networking sites, with plenty of stories about sexual predators stalking the 15-39 target market.
So are these sites just all about sex? Mr Jones disputed that MySpace was. “I’d say that the major subject is music, but I don’t deny that when you get 80 million 15 to 39-year-olds; that is the beauty and the difficulty of it … but the same as when you get a whole bunch of kids at university, yes, sex happens.”
Mr Jones said 24/7 help lines were in place in the US and increased security measures would be introduced in Australia soon.
But wait, there’s more. Coming soon to a mobile phone near you: the chance to upload your life and mingle in the virtual malls and parks of cyberspace.
MySpace - in October or so - Yahoo!7 and Telstra will extend access to their fast-growing community sites to hand-held devices in coming months.
“With Telstra and BigPond really focused on integrated services, we will be exploring new opportunities for user-generated content given the crossover we can provide between the online and third-generation mobile content worlds,” Mr Middleton said.
“With 3G mobile’s video messaging capabilities, it’s simple for customers to generate their own content and post it to the web.”Must be set in iimage-browser.phpMust be set in iimage-browser.phpMust be set in iimage-browser.php