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New Models for User Participation
Users have not only become integral to the delivery side of the content equation; they now figure prominently in the creation side as well. Technorati Inc., an Internet search engine, estimates that there are some 72 million blogs on the Web. And as the Internet decentralizes the ability to author and publish content, media companies are weighing whether and how to incorporate users into their models.
Some publishers have embraced user participation. "We believe that our users are going to be creators of compelling content," Citron says. Rodale encourages users to submit video of a successful exercise regimen or to create a patch for its online breast cancer quilt.
But inviting user input means managing a deluge of data. Citron says Rodale could receive thousands of video submissions on a given topic. "You need some control," he says. "To go through these submissions manually -- to review, index and post them -- you'd get killed." Rodale is piloting several tools, such as Neighborhood America, that integrate with its Vignette CMS and enable editors to cull and post submissions automatically.
This spring, HBSP will test the blog waters in its resource centers. "It's not blogging in the way you think of Instapundit [a political blog]," says Macht, but it will allow readers to use the tools and interact with one another. With Web analytics tool Coremetrics, HBSP will also track user behavior to identify content that resonates with readers. Paciorek is also experimenting with blogs as a platform for developing more timely content. In February, Access Intelligence sent editors to report on the Satellite 2007 conference in Washington, D.C., which, he says, has been "moderately successful" in engaging readers.
But not every publisher embraces the open-community model. At the U.S. branch of Oxford Publishing Co., with $130 million in revenue, VP and Director of IT Corey Podolsky says that while Oxford will consider tools to give voice to the academic community it serves, it isn't swinging the door open to the general public. "We'll never be the ones to put out unvetted community content. We're not Luddites, but that's not what our brand stands for."
Scott Karp, author of Publishing 2.0, a blog that focuses on the publishing industry, says that while UGC may prompt debates about how open a community should be, the real issue is how publishers use these new content channels to satisfy consumer demand.
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