UberNoggin

The McKinsey Quarterly Journal recently released a research paper summarizing a study of 573 users of contributory video sites. In addition to their findings regarding why people contribute videos, the report includes the table below which shows the supposed rates of participation in many web 2.0 applications. This is a prime example of corporate research publishing findings generated by others without questioning the rigor of the findings.

• 6% of residents of Second Life create 100% of the content?: If you take a look at the study from which this number is drawn, you’d see that the study included an N of all registered accounts at the time of the study, not active accounts. They also defined participation as engaging in the economy through purchase not as actually creating content for themselves or for sale to others. This is an absolutely inaccurate measure of participation. Any one who uses Second Life at all would know this.
• 2% of Wikipedia users create 60% of content?: This stat is misleading due to its being based on a comparison of the numbers of visitors against the number of registered users. Wikipedia gets an astronomical amount of traffic. The fact that only 2% of visitors become contributors is out of proportion to the size of the user population and should also be compared to the number of contributors responsible for a printed encyclopedia for reference.
• 2% of Flickr users post 95% of content?: So the million pics posted a day (Flickr adds 15 terabytes of storage per month!) accounts for grandma posting her 10 pics a month but it also accounts for the photography buff down the street who posts several hundred a week. The fact that there are a few folks who post a whole heck of a lot of content doesn’t make grandma’s pics any less important.
• 60% of del.icio.us content is posted by 10% of users?: There are a couple of important lessons in this one. First, is the nature of the tool. Del.icio.us is primarily a selfish service. I book mark sites so I can find them again. It’s nice that other people might find them useful but that’s not my primary reason to use the site. Second, of all the sites listed on the graph, del.icio.us is by far the easiest to use and the one most similar to a popular old tool, bookmarking in your browser. It’s no wonder that del.icio.us comes across as the most participatory website!

Misuse of research never ceases to amaze me. In the rush to publish a whitepaper or study companies (and sometimes academics, but much less so) snag numbers from whatever source they can find, dress them up, and present them as credible facts.

Dig a little deeper, folks. Get a better understanding of what you’re talking about BEFORE you post/publish/press release.

Post a Comment