“Release no smartphone before its time” seems to be the slogan of both AT&T and Verizon. My romance with HTC slide-style smartphones began all the way back in March of this year, when I tested the Verizon XV6700. I liked it a lot, but ultimately returned it after learning that the release of the newer, sleeker, and more powerful Verizon XV6800 was “imminent.” Weeks passed, then months, with no XV6800 in sight. Apple introduced its iPhone – I was sure this would spur Verizon into action, if only to piggyback on the iPhone hoopla. As the XV6800 release date receded into the ever-more-distant future, I transferred my affections to the AT&T Tilt, not so much because of the Tilt’s slanted display but because the projected release date was a month or two earlier than Verizon’s.
Online community builders love to toss around gross numbers – twenty thousand members, two million posts, and so on. Amid all the statistics, it’s important to recognize that all community members aren’t created equal – some are a lot more prolific. In Why Users Create Content, we cited a McKinsey research brief, How companies can make the most of user-generated content. In addition to offering reasons that explain why users post content, the report also included interesting data showing that a small number of users are responsible for creating the bulk of the content on most community sites.
A key aspect of Web 2.0 is letting users create or enhance a site’s content. This sounds great, but in practice can be hard to achieve. The Web is littered with dead forums, unreviewed products, spammed-out wikis, and other failed attempts to build user-created sites. Consulting giant McKinsey has posted a research brief, How companies can make the most of user-generated content, that helps explain why users add content to websites, and how to best encourage the process. The firm surveyed nearly 600 users of four German video sharing sites, and reached some interesting conclusions:
The concept of crowdsourcing – letting a bunch your users create your product, or at least enhance it – is a staple of Web 2.0. Now, we see that European social networking site Mister Wong is crowdsourcing their corporate identity by holding a logo design contest. The contest offers $12,000 in prize money, with half going to the winner and the remainder split between two runners-up.