Fame/Reputation building seems key motivating factor for user uploaded content.(mckinseyquarterly.com)
mckinseyquarterly.com
Fame/Reputation building seems key motivating factor for user uploaded content.
http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Marketing/Digital_Marketing/How_companies_can_make_the_most_of_user-generated_content
2 comments
Register now to read this article? What are they thinking?
It's pretty common for business research companies to sell studies for lots of money. McKinsey, Forrester, et al. use their reputation to sell content, and the content propagates reputation.
"We observed that users cite a variety of reasons for posting content online--chief among them, a hunger for fame, the urge to have fun, and a desire to share experiences with friends"
What's interesting about the notion of reputation and fame is that, for a user to feel like they belong or are "having fun" or a held in esteem by a group of people, that group needs to be a compatible reference group meaning, they need to have things in common (this idea was touched upon in the article "The Problem with Social News" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50015 and the discussion of homophily, meaning loosely birds of a feather flock together). For examples, entrepreneurs are much more likely to be concerned about the opinions of other entrepreneurs than other people. I take more seriously the music suggestions of people that have the same tastes as me (obvious, right?).
So if everyone on a site could be plugged into a compatible reference group, the fame and reputation motivation could be leveraged across much larger populations of users, not just the ones that want to be, for example, on the top viewed videos on youtube. Each user would be compared against those users with which they have common interests, so the idea of having a reputation becomes more salient, so people spend more time contributing, and the content becomes better for everyone at an individual level. Lots of sites are able to harness the reputation motive on subject specific areas (like Y Hacker news), but no site has tried to harness the motivation for reputation across all interest groups. Definitely email me if this interests you because it fascinates me and I have plans to build such a site.