The WordCamp Report

Scott Porad with Pet Holdings, the parent company of I Can Has Cheezburger? and Failblog.org, among many others.

What these sites have in common is they are entertainment/humor business, they are hosted on WordPress.com on the VIP hosting plan, among the top 50 blogs on the service, and they are based upon user generated and generated content.

He works with crowd sourcing and depends upon user interaction rather than distributed content, though sites like these also help people distribute aggregated content as well.

How can you use your users, fans of what you are doing, to help you create your content as well as drive the content to make it even more relevant to them.

This technique is not new. The Gong Show was one of the first examples of the audience controlling and generating content. Call-in Talk Radio is another example, as is educational journals, and other mediums that thrive on user generated content. He believes it creates more authentic user experiences for people rather than a dried, controlled format. America’s Funniest Videos is a prime example of user generated content dictating content production, and made it more participatory. You don’t have to generate content, people bring it to you.

Online generated content is doing the same thing, using the tools people already have, cameras, videos, computers, and allowing them to mix and mashup. News publishers are contributing content, allowing publishers and editors to choose what is broadcast, but technology is now permitting people to contribute and choose what comes back to them.

Crowd sourcing is the notion of the wisdom of the crowds. If I ask you a question, you may or may not be right, as everyone has an option, but if you ask many people to ask a lot of other people, if you took all the collective experiences, you would get an answer. The crowd can be more wise than any one person.

User generated content applies crowd sourcing to the process of letting the crowd speak and have their say, dictating and controlling the process.

He uses the example of American Idol. The production boils down the contestants to the final ones, and then the audience makes the final choices. JPG magazine for professional photographers built in an army of people to help promote the magazine because they’ve included subscriber content, the people have their say in the final version of the magazine.

Threadless has a design contest very week for their t-shirts, and the next week, they print those up based upon the audience’s input. They know people will buy them because they requested them.

Amazon.com is another example of letting the audience review and comment on any product or service. User generated content can quickly turn into “user generated crap” and Amazon invites people to sort reviews by what the audience thinks is most helpful in the reviews, such as the “did this review help you” to score the score. The yes or no review or judgement is much more effective than the “rate this” from a 1-10 score.

“They Want Your Wallet” or “Knife pointing” is a technique of being really clear on asking for specific user generated content. Be specific or you get junk.

How do you sustain and monetize this. There are some categories of content you can’t get your content for free. If you are a newspaper and you need someone who has to work really hard to get the content, you have to pay for that labor. Some areas must reward their users in order to get continued quality content.

To keep the energy and commitment to continued user generated content, he says that most people want to have attention and “fame.” He calls this “Internet Famous,” the little bits of famous, like when you have a lot of subscribers, a video or post with sudden flash of popularity, a lot of Twitter followers, a way for people to feel specific for their smaller accomplishment, rather than a top 10 hit single or big “TV” famous. When people feel special, they feel like they are part of the process, thus attention and “Internet famous” is enough to reward them.

He talks about the “Life of a LOL.” People see their stuff and think, “That’s easy. I can do it.” Their team worked hard to make their content submit page to be as simple as possible. As few choices and options as possible. It takes them through the steps, one at a time, easily. The name of the game is to get as much as can but keep it as simple as possible.

Their “editors” screen for porn and violence but little else. They have to be aggressive at filtering comments and content to ensure good taste and appropriates.

They then offer voting models for people to choose win or fail for the various images, or a very simple voting technique. Sometimes they want to know how funny, or just if it is funny – yes or no. There is also a “flagging” option to help users to mark content as possibly inappropriate.

Once the vote is done, they publish the finalists, and then ask another vote, and then boil it down, letting the users drive the content and the decisions.

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