You Can Create - And It Should Be Shared
Oct 28th, 2007 by Dan Blank
Chuqui and Scott Karp are pondering that user-generated content is a myth.
“This shouldn’t be surprising to people, because if you’ve run communities for any length of time, you’ll run into the 1% rule: in any community of size, the vast majority of your content is created by about 1% of the membership.”
“It’s that most people don’t create. Or don’t see themselves as creative. Or don’t see what they create as interesting. Or don’t see what they create as being AS INTERESTING as stuff other people are creating.”
I think that this last point is the lesson of Web 2.0. The tools to create and distribute your creations are becoming easier and easier to use, and of course, free. What we are experiencing is the education of an entire society, that they can create, and that their creations should be shared.
I think that the choice of social object is a critical point here. People need to feel that their creations or mash-ups have value. Or that they are a reflection of who they are. Video and photos are easy to create and post, but hard to do well. The thing that makes them interesting at all is putting them in context. But as social objects, it is hard to create something that is a true reflection of who you are. We are focused on recipes because they are a reflection of personal taste and a launching point for conversation / sharing: who doesn’t tweak a recipe to their tastes or add their spin?