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All good things must come to an end. So goes the saying. And is the end of user generated content heading that way?
I think it probably is exactly where user generated content is heading. I believe that as social media, blogging, twitter and review sites have become more and more mainstream, it has is becoming less and less powerful, insightful and helpful. This is because instead of a few really passionate people with deep understanding and knowledge of a topic or area carefully crafting and writing about a topic, there has been and is a growing trend for people to either "gush" or "vent". This makes for less powerful and less helpful advice and comment to guide and to get help from.
Some friends who run a Guest House in Cape Town, who are usually the #1 or #2 rated in hotels in that city, are finding (for example) that TripAdvisor.com is becoming less helpful and powerful for them. This is because the reviews now tend to be just as I described above: a few words gushing about how lovely it is or a few lines on what they hated. The reviews lack substance and lack depth of content. Unlike years ago where more geeky and passionate people would invest time in their commentary, reviews and try and be more helpful and informative.
I have found when trying to research a problem - or find out about an area I need some help with -be it how to chose the right Apple Mac or solve a problem that you have to wade through piles of "stuff". There is a lot of noise that has to be waded through, and much of it is not very helpful (or accurate) ideas and suggestions. Increasingly you need to find experts with history and time of doing things.
I have found that my various blogs and even my videos of travel and hotel rooms on YouTube are growing in traffic and usage. I have been running them since 2005 and so there is history and so people (I suspect) are coming as they know there is depth there.
I think that the huge explosion in social media and everyone posting and commenting is the new SPAM! Just like it ruined email, it is ruining user generated content. Increasingly it is clogging up the system, and opening ways to a new way to emerge. More likely more validated and expert screening, and emeregence of more monitored and expert content.
What do you think? Post a thought and comment in the blog.
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4 comments:
Hi Gary, an interesting post but I have to disagree. Both users and technology will become better at sorting the wheat from the chaff. In fact we are already seeing signs of this on some review sites with easy voting tools encouraging users to vote on whether they found a review useful or not. To borrow your own analogy, email spam has definitely got worse but the human and automatic filters and our own ability to tell junk from value have become far superior. Having said that, I hope this comment makes it through...
As I tap away on my iPhone another thought strikes me: perhaps a key reason for the increase in vacuous user generated content is the mobile phone. These devices make it so easy to comment and post but they also encourage brevity. It's hard to make a serious point if you only have 140 characters.
The day after my blog, there was an article in the Guardian about why sites like Tripadvisor are becoming less useful and they also talk about the "vent" and "gush" problem....
Why TripAdvisor is getting a bad review http://t.co/xKSIoNs @guardian.
Your article is interesting, Gary. That’s why passionate people like you shall keep on writing and commenting reviews to help travelers.
Wendy
A thought provoking post. In my opinion, users can tell immediately when a post is sincere or spam. There's so much of it around, we are, as Dan says, getting better at sorting through it. But do we want to? Sites should spend more time on the trust issues. Certified reviews, for instance. I would rather visit a site which has a record of trusted content. Certified reviews are a sure way of increasing content quality, and as the review author has been specifically asked for their feedback, so is accountable, this should cut out fake content too. More sites with certified quality reviews please.
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