Now that Web 2.0 has exploded, members of the elite big-media are starting to pick up the pieces and test if they will fit into audience gaps or advertising needs.
As a publisher, you should keep an eye on what types of user generated content are helpful to businesses and which become—or are already—headaches.
Cox Communications recently finalized its acquisition of the Travel Channel and intends to tap the travel industry’s extensive user contributed images and video market. After all, who doesn’t take pictures on vacation?
Cox’s hope is to become an “on-demand provider of destination-based programming,” according to the article.
It is also hoping to avoid the legal quagmire experienced by user-based sites like YouTube by educating contributing users about copyright law.
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The Travel Channel’s tiptoe into the user contributed video market exemplifies questions that many publishers have with Web 2.0, such as:
- How much should we allow users to contribute?
- How much should we regulate user content?
- What legal obligations do we have to regulate the content?
The answers to these questions and many others have not yet materialized because Web 2.0 is still accelerating. But experiments like Cox’s and the current lawsuits against Google and YouTube will soon provide concrete answers.
The answer to one Web 2.0 question, “Should we let users create our advertising,” may have been answered by a recent New York Times article about people doing strange things with ketchup.
Heinz is holding a contest where users can submit homemade Heinz ketchup commercials for television. Five lucky directors will have their commercials aired on TV and one winner will get $57,000.
Sounds like a great way to incorporate user content, right?
It turns out that sifting through the submissions, many of them mediocre, is a time consuming and expensive exercise. Heinz’s contest is becoming at least as, if not more, expensive than hiring an advertising agency to create a commercial, according to the article.
User generated content is great. It helps build a community of devoted users to your website who want to contribute content, consume content and frequently return to read comments.
But user generated advertising might be a dark corner of Web 2.0 better left unexplored.
Advertising is a specialized skill. It takes an artist’s devotion and a scholar’s knowledge to create great advertising. Counting on amateurs to do it seems incredibly risky.
Keep your users contributing content and keep an eye on the big media companies as they explore and push the boundaries of Web 2.0. You’ll be developing your community and learning if there are any ways your can enrich it.
Other Web 2.0 experiments to monitor include:
ABC News’ i-Caught, a television show featuring news stories built around user generated video. The show will have a companion site, i-Caught.com, and will begin on Aug. 9, according to the article.
CBS’ acquisition of Last.fm, a UK-based website based on user recommendations for music. CBS is hoping to attract a younger audience and adopt a more user generated content approach, according to the article.
