Participation On Web 2.0 Sites Remains Weak

I guess this article shatters the myth that Web 2.0 sites are the all and all.  Enjoy!!

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Participation on Web 2.0 sites remains weak -study

By Eric Auchard

412 words

17 April 2007

22:01

Reuters News

English

(c) 2007 Reuters Limited

SAN FRANCISCO, April 17 (Reuters) - Web 2.0, a catchphrase for the latest generation of Web sites where users contribute their own text, pictures and video content, is far less participatory than commonly assumed, a study showed on Tuesday.

A tiny 0.16 percent of visits to Google's top video-sharing site, YouTube, are by users seeking to upload video for others to watch, according to a study of online surfing data by Bill Tancer, an analyst with Web audience measurement firm Hitwise.

Similarly, only two-tenths of one percent of visits to Flickr, a popular photo-editing site owned by Yahoo Inc. , are to upload new photos, the Hitwise study found.

The vast majority of visitors are the Internet equivalent of the television generation's couch potatoes -- voyeurs who like to watch rather than create, Tancer's statistics show.

Wikipedia, the anyone-can-edit online encyclopaedia, is the one exception cited in the Hitwise study: 4.6 percent of all visits to Wikipedia pages are to edit entries on the site.

But despite relatively low-user involvement, visits to Web 2.0-style sites have spiked 668 percent in two years, Tancer said.

"Web 2.0 and participatory sites (are) really gaining traction," he told an audience of roughly 3,000 Internet entrepreneurs, developers and financiers attending the Web 2.0 Expo industry conference in San Francisco this week.

Web 2.0, a phrase popularized by conference organizer Tim O'Reilly, refers to the current generation of Web sites that seek to turn viewers into contributors by giving them tools to write, post, comment and upload their own creative work.

Besides Wikipedia, other well-known Web 2.0 destinations are social network sites like News Corp.'s MySpace and Facebook and photo-sharing site Photobucket.

Visits by Web users to the category of participatory Web 2.0 sites account for 12 percent of U.S. Web activity, up from only 2 percent two years ago, the study showed.

Web 2.0 photo-sharing sites now account for 56 percent of visits to all online photo sites. Of that, Photobucket alone accounts for 41 percent of the traffic, Hitwise data shows.

An older, first generation of sites, now in the minority, are photo-finishing sites that give users the ability to store, share and print photos.

What's the source of this article, my my2cents?  Did you write it yourself, or are you new to this forum?

oh u want the link?

lack of participation in the web 2.0 craze by nigerians is primarily due to the fact that quite a large number of people do not see the revenue. everybody wants quick returns, immediate, now now. so if they are told it is going to take a while there wont be that much interest.