Web 2.0 is a World of Couch Potatoes

Popular Web 2.0 sites such as Flickr, YouTube and Wikipedia host valuable content. But how many people created this content?

According to this study, very few. For example, of every 600 visitors to YouTube, 599 watch videos; only one contributes a new video.

Of these three sites, only Wikipedia enjoys a decent participation rate: for every 600 visitors, 28 contribute -- a 2,800 percent improvement over YouTube.

Perhaps visitors to Wikipedia participate more because they don't have to commit to a registration process.

Or it might be that participation need not be a lengthy, difficult affair: contributing a spelling correction to an article in Wikipedia is far easier than shooting a video for YouTube.

Critics of Wikipedia say that the absence of these barriers and other forms of oversight has made it broken beyond repair.

There's a Web 2.0 site that's been with us for a long, long time. It offers the right incentive to generate both a high rate of contribution and a high quality of content.

This site is eBay.

The contributors to eBay willingly wade through the relatively complex process of contributing content (ie. posting things for sale) because they have a strong, direct incentive to contribute: they make money doing it!

The next release of Findbyclick, which is only weeks away, will strike a balance similar to eBay: many contribute content to improve its overall value for both contributors and consumers. I think that the large hoards of mobile contributors we will attract, and which is largely absent from Wikipedia, can help us achieve this goal.