Nearly Half of U.S. 'Net Users Post Content

An anonymous reader copies and pastes: "WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Nearly half of U.S. Internet users have built Web pages, posted photos, written comments or otherwise added to the enormous variety of material available online, according to a report released on Sunday. The Pew Internet and American Life Project found that about 44 percent of the country's Internet users have created content for others to enjoy online." Don't read the blurb - cut straight to the study.

Comments

Heartwarming

[Max Romantschuk]

If you ask me, the more people creating content the better. The web is a collaborate medium after all.

Granted, there's a lot of worthess content out there, but I'd take a truly democratic system over an overly controlled one any day.

Slashdot is a bad example.

[irokitt]

Since most of Slashdot's readers are qualified nerds, we find ~10%-20% of the posts to be good, interesting reading. Everyone else out there would rather watch paint dry.

Re:Slashdot is a bad example.

[JaredOfEuropa]

Everyone else out there would rather watch paint dry

This is actually one of the strong points of the Internet! It is hard to find a working economic model for publishing or discussing matters that do not interest a very large audience, using traditional media such as newspapers or television. On the Internet however, that is radically different. Everyone can be a publisher, and there are places where the weirdest sort of things can be discussed.

The fact that a particular webboard or newsgroup on, say, migration patterns of the Canadian yellowtail finch, is of no interest whatsoever to all but a few Internet users, is not a failure of the Internet... the fact that the 2 or 3 people (probably from different countries) who are interested in this subject have a place to discuss it, makes it a success! I think that counting the number of people interested in a particular bit of Web content, makes an exceedingly poor measure of its quality. The Internet is an incredible rich source of information. Despite the fact that almost no one cares one bit about the yellowtail finch, there will be some information on it somewhere, should you ever need it. In that case... judge the quality of the information on its accuracy, not on the number of people it appeals to.

Personal Home Pages

[joonasl]

I've wondered for a long time, if there is anything less useful in the world than all the eleventythousand personal homepages that everyone on the net seems to be doing. Millions of pages, where people want to share their hobbies and names of their family members..

Thus far I have found one (1) use for these pages: finding the email address for someone. Unfortunately, lately because of the spam pandemic, even that function is dissapearing since people don't want to out their email addresses to public internet.

Personally I think that when I have become interesting enough to have a personal homepage, someone else will do it for me :)

Re:Personal Home Pages

[G-funk]

That's just tops for you, mate. But I like randomly clicking links sometimes (like /. sigs), and often I come across something interesting or worth reading... Just you think it's boring, doesn't mean I will, or Joe from down the street. And usually, if somebody posts something online, it's because they know somebody who would be interested in reading it...

Telephone sampling

[venicebeach]

The study notes that the response rate was 32.8%, meaning that the vast majority of people who were called refused to participate in the survey. This is a potential source of bias in the sample. I can certainly see those who are more eager about their internet use being more likely to participate in the study to brag about their contributions to the internet. The numbers do seem kind of high to me.

Re:The real question...

[NanoGator]

"The real question is, how much of the content is even worth existing? "

Since when do we need to place a value on individual expression?

Re:1/2 post, less than 1% quality

[flacco]

So millions and millions of people post content, but how much is useful, easy to read, and informative? Probably less than one percent.

All those attributes are largely in the eye of the beholder.

I think it's too often stated that the net "democratizes". The true beauty of the net is that it pluralizes. even if there are only a few hundred agitors scattered across an oppressed country - or for that matter, only a couple dozen globally-dispersed teenagers who obsess over geri ryan's ass - they can communicate, discuss, and get community critique of their otherwise lonely and isolated ideas.

So to answer your question - a LOT of it is "useful, easy to read, and informative" - to its target audience.

And 99% of it is crap

[jaltoids]

OK

Buying a copy of word and sitting down and typing isnt going to make you a writer

Buying a copy of dreamweaver (or shudder front page) isnt going to make you a web designer. People do things on the web that they would never do in their front yard. How many of you have seen those garish sites that make you want to cry, or your eyes bleed? People have forgotten that the web is a PUBLIC space, it is one giant central park.

Just because you can do something dosen't mean you should, and people posting on the web need to remember this!

Re:And 99% of it is crap

[Peeet]

Central park, maybe not; no one ever forces you to look at their site. it's hard to put an analogy on the web and peoples personal sites because posting a personal site simultaneously (sp?) puts it at the same level as the largest most visited site on the net and the smallest least known pointless site. It's one giant level playing field where one site is never more or less accesible than another (all of this disregarding some variables like the slashdot effect or search engines or simplicity of domain name)

The point is, anyone can put stuff up and I think should be encouraged. It's not like this weighs the internet down and slows it down for the rest of us, at least as far as i know, but it instead adds another node of possible information. I don't know how many times I have received some sort of small snippet of useful information from someone's homepage or description or information of a personal hobby.

I also wish sometimes that people would post more of their stuff into the sort of "public domain" that the internet creates. If I had time and bandwidth to spare, I would post sites that explain the simple steps of how to get started into projects or hobbies or school assignments that I have done or quick explanations that bridge those gaps left by hardcore enthusiasts who have whole webrings devoted to the advanced topics of some hobby, but no one gives a good introduction helpers to the basic beginner, amerateur (I mangled that spelling.) things to do or know. Like what was your first few weeks of learning directly after you discovered this thing's existance? **cough**linux**cough** What do all those damned abbreviations stand for or where did that weird nonsensical name come from? How does this compare to other options? We all have to relearn this and then after the frustration and steep learning curve, we never go back and try and make that easier for others, lessen the learning curve.

Yes there's a lot of crap websites out there, but what do you care? A) no one is forcing you to look at it and B) it doesn't slow down or bog the internet or take up precious space (although IP addresses could be argued) because it creates its own space to exist in as soon as it goes up. The internet is one of the most free open things in existance.

Crap is an inevitability in free/openness and is a good sign that it still is a free and open system. Embrace it.

Re:1/2 post, less than 1% quality

[inaeldi]

Try taking Livejournal as the cross section though. That's when the useful content plummets to almost nil.

WHAT content?

[SharpFang]

1) It means that 56% of American internet users are plain parasites who take and give nothing back - and don't participate in any online communities.
2) Maybe that's better... Anyway... Great most of the content is junk that makes finding "true gems" even harder. (webforum blurbs, webpages which repeat the same stolen articles and photos 1000's times, flames, unanswered questions and clueless answers to mailing lists, misleading links, fake keywords... finding something new, creative and useful is getting gradually harder, not easier because of this "richness")

That's OK.

[SharpFang]

If that's meant to be a journal, it should end with your life's end. But if it's a "content webpage" like "Database of all cars created in 19th century", once it's completed and published, and after some period of bugfixes, it may be perfectly well left on the web for years, unchanged - and it will still remain a valuable resource - once completed it never needs changes.

Re:And yet broadband providers CRIPPLE us.

[Vancorps]

That's why you "donate" to DynDNS to get them to do it for you. It really is an excellent service. I've been with them for years now, I first ordered at 3am and within a half hour I got an email saying my account was setup from a geek that was just up all night doing something or other. Was great. If there were a service worth donating to it is that.

I'm impressed that considering I have been a member for years they continue to offer more and more services, many of them are free! So maybe you're wrong on the last part, I hope so at least.

Re:1/2 post, less than 1% quality

[notque]

If you read a thread with a +4 threshold, then you will all the recent posts that have not had a chance to receive an eventual +4 or +5 rating. I wish there was a way to request only the subset of posts that have been rated interesting or informative by at least one moderator. That wouldn't solve the case of omitting worthwhile posts that haven't been moderated yet, but it would reduce the effect of excluding underrated posts.

Too bad he'll never see your reply.

Re:1/2 post, less than 1% quality

[leifbk]

I think it's too often stated that the net "democratizes". The true beauty of the net is that it pluralizes.

You'got a very good point.

I think that Andy Warhol's "15 minutes of fame" may be wrong. Actually, anyone of us can be famous to 15 other persons instead. All it takes is to set up a decent website and fill it with content that in some way feels important to oneself.

I run a Norwegian website called Solumslekt with a fairly big genealogy database (yes, I'm in the "senior" group), and in a couple of years I've gathered quite a group of attenders who are hanging around on the discussion forum.

For more than 99% of the Web audience my site is probably worthless, but among the few who share my interests, I've earned myself some good reputation.

I pay the equivalent of twenty bucks a month for professional web hosting, and I think it's worth it. Writing a book isn't my idea of fun, and most genealogy books don't return the investment anyway. It's so much easier to publish on the web.

Re:1/2 post, less than 1% quality

[smallpaul]

So millions and millions of people post content, but how much is useful, easy to read, and informative? Probably less than one percent.

You might as well ask what percentage of information transported over the telephone is useful, easy to read and informative? Who cares? People are communicating with other people and the quality of the communication is (as another poster said) in the eye of the beholder. A dump of pictures from my wedding is probably dreck to you but interesting to my mother in law.

Re:The real question...

[yintercept]

Since when do we need to place a value on individual expression?

A double edged question--From an individual perspective, we need to strive to find that information that is meaningful to us. That is we all have to filter out the tripe.

From a system's perspective, I think Google has the right approach, the system should just gather and try to index the information in a usable manner and let the individual make their choice.

The main things that google needs to look for are data structures that are clearly misleading like pages typed up by bots.

Re:1/2 post, less than 1% quality

[ultranova]

Try taking Livejournal as the cross section though. That's when the useful content plummets to almost nil.

Diaries of unknown people are unlikely to be usefull to anyone except historians. Why would knowing about my day to day life be usefull to you ?

To make actually usefull content, like games, stories, pictures or music, requires some actual effort. Blogs and diarys can be entertaining, but they are unlikely to be usefull.

The biggest problem is getting to it.

[torpor]

I've been on the 'net since the early 80's, been involved with some big ISP startup moments in the 90's, and I've noticed that peoples 'net-sphere' grows rapidly when they first get on the 'net, and then consequently stabilizes.

What do I mean by net-sphere? The list of sites one visits daily, or regularly, for news/updates, etc. Apart from google queries, one rarely goes outside this net-sphere ...

For example, I visit a list of 5 sites daily. And when I'm done with those sites, I rarely visit any others, willingly, unless I happen to randomly come across something new that interests me.

It frustrates me to know end, knowing as I do at the end of my '5 site browse session' that there are probably at least 7 or 8 other sites out there which would interest me, and which would hold my interest, and which I would add to my list of 'net-sphere' sites... only how do I find them?

It'd be nice to have a site where I could go, plug in my 5 favourite (most-visited) sites, and get a list of recommendations for other sites to peruse/visit. I know sites like that exist ... but how do I find them?

Search engines only solve the search for things you know you want to look for ... but that leaves maybe 85% of the problem unsolved. "Search Engines" need to evolved more into "Recommendation Engines".

I'd happily subscribe to a list of 'cool sites to look out for', if I could, say, plug in answers to a ton of questions about the things I like, and if that service was smart enough to find me sites that were really interesting to me, I'd use it more often.

Content isn't the problem. Finding the content is still a problem, google-success aside. (Hey, I like google, but search engines don't fill the entire need...)

If anyone has recommendations for cool, regularly (daily) updated sites on the subject of technology, music, music technology, gadgets, meeting real nerd chicks online, and travel tips for Europe, I'd sure like to know them. :) Short of asking my friends and associates what their favourite daily-sites are, I don't know any other way to find the cool stuff ...

As a wise man once said

[Bertie]

The great thing about the Internet is that it means everybody can publish.

The worst thing about the Internet is that it means everybody can publish.

Free Expression Is Great

[Little Dave]

Aw hell, who cares that most of what is on the internet is stuff and nonesense? Not I. True, Blogs tend to be tedious, self-indulgent twaddle. In more enlightened times, they would have been kept under mattress, lock and key and never revealed to the world. But thats doesn't mean there is no value in them.

I keep a website. It's not a blog. It's just a ... website. It's pure self-indulgence. I write about ... stuff. It goes largely ignored by most denizens of the net. But there is a small subset of people from all over the globe, that visit regularly. And sometimes, if the fancy takes them, they'll contribute and comment. How amazing is that? To have an audience for your thoughts and ramblings, on an international scale!

What an amazing world we live in!