I just read Micro Persuasion's Steve Rubel post talks about 25% of entertainment will  be created by peer groups (which I equate with User Generated Content) and dispersed using mobile phones:

"…The good news about this report is that much of the entertainment will be created and distributed on mobile phones."

On the other hand, it's Nokia who wrote the paper - wouldn't they have a vested interest in having content appear on their own mobile devices? 

"..To that point, TV Week conducted an analysis and found that while it's easy to get attention for your work, making money is a tougher climb. This might keep the figure from going higher than 25%."

Here's more of the initial analysis from Nokia: 

"…Nokia’s latest study, ‘A Glimpse of the Next Episode’, predicts that within five years a quarter of all entertainment will be created, edited and shared within peer groups rather than coming out of traditional media groups. Trend-setting consumers from 17 countries were asked about their digital behaviors and lifestyles. Nokia also used information gathered from its 900 million customers and views of leading industry figures to reach the conclusion that you will control 25% of the world’s entertainment by 2012.

“From our research we predict that up to a quarter of the entertainment being consumed in five years will be what we call ‘Circular’. The trends we are seeing show us that people will have a genuine desire not only to create and share their own content, but also to remix it, mash it up and pass it on within their peer groups - a form of collaborative social media,” said Mark Selby, Vice President, Multimedia, Nokia.

Nokia also looked at four emerging trends that will make entertainment more collaborative and creative as we move towards Circular Entertainment. These trends are listed as, Immersive Living; Geek Culture; G Tech and Localism."

Clearly, there is more to this in terms of the types of content that will be user generated and how it will be shared.   The implications are that more of us are going to be "stars" of sorts, but it's not going to produce much revenue for the people creating the media though it will enrich-en our choices of what to watch and consume.

Reading iPod Touch Commercial - Democratized Creative Hits Prime Time reminds me of how boring most commercial advertising is, including corporate PR.   And yet, when you have enthused fans creating content that is authentic, it can go over much better, like the iPod Touch Commercial that was created by an 18 year old Apple fan Nick Haley from the UK.

I don't know if all advertising can be user generated - but I bet a lot more of it can be.   And it also reminds me of how squalid corporate messaging can be, and I have a personal experience with that recently - but won't give the details.  Suffice it to say that I'm in the process of writing an paper for an academic publication - the paper would be a collaboration with someone else, however, it's based, partly on corporate work.

As soon as we brought in corporate messaging - the proposed had many more restrictions and probably won't be half has good, when published, than were we allowed to write the thing the way we'd like to, but can't.

I understand the need for corporate messaging, but I also understand that most people, including those making up the branding, as consumers - are turned off by the very messaging they're creating.  

Anyway, getting back to the iPod Touch Commercial - it reminds me that I bought an iPod Touch recently and did not have much time, till tonight, to do anything with it - but I found, again, that while the iPod Touch is much closer to a full laptop or desktop experience, it falls short in several ways.   For one thing, I literally can't blog with it - I can't log into secure sites using the iPod Touch - and I tried several times.

Also, it's still pretty cumbersome to type - and I wish a convertible keyboard that is portable could be plugged in, when desired.  

Finally, while the iPod Touch and iPhone give the illusion of a fully enabled internet interface, they fall short - I think it gets halfway there - but I'm still trying to decide how much to put on the iPod Touch and what the content is going to be.

User Generated Video Classified Ads has just entered our lives with HotSwap Launches - Video Classifieds as reported in TechCrunch today.

"…Hotswap is targeting the $370 billion/year U.S. used car market with a free, video-focused classifieds site. Listings are optimized to allow users to quickly upload video of the car with a camera phone or other low end video equipment.

Both normal users and car dealers can upload listings. The company has inked a deal with Red McCombs Automotive, which will upload all of their used cars to the site. Other business development deals are being negotiated now."

For example, http://hotswap.com/products/view/13dc2f6c979f/2003-BMW-M3-/ shows a 2003 BMW M3 you can buy that's located in Beverly Hills.   If you see the Video Classified ad and then want to share it you can email the page to a friend.  You can't embed the video anywhere else (which I'd have preferred, but I can understand why they don't want to do that).

Why is this all important? Today it's used cars, tomorrow it's going to be dating, your next job interviews, and pretty much… anything you can think of will start being done this way. 

No, I'm not kidding and I'm rarely wrong about this kind of thing.  My Intuition, just flashed a big….. this is big.   User Generated Advertising - just arrived in full force with HotSwap.com, but it's only the very beginning of a much bigger movement beyond used cars.

I also like the search interface of HotSwap.com, very smart, very easy to operate and it has just the right level of selectivity … give controls to the buyers, they know what they want.

I could put in a Zip Code around where I live and see used cars I can buy around here (New York) but I think the concept is viable that soon we're going to see clones of this interface for dating and job candidates, as well as a dozen other things.  I give it by this time next year - a whole market will emerge around platforms like what HotSwap.com is using.

How about Political Candidates using a platform like HotSwap.com to talk about what they'd do for local neighborhoods?  A well researched campaign could find many potential hot neighborhoods where swing voters are located who have issues they are waiting to be addressed…might now a platform like HotSwap be the idea way to deliver a candidates message?  

I predict HotSwap will become a major player and TechCrunch did give them a favorable review HotSwap Launches - Video Classifieds.

Well…it depends on what kind of conversation your talking about - but if you want to know and be part of a good conversation, a hip conversation then you'll want to be conversing about The Era of Conversation — October 4 where friend and  fellow blogger Valeria Maltoni will keynote  - at The Era of Conversation Conference hosted by the Direct Marketing Association of Washington, DC on October 4th.  According to Valeria:

"…In my presentation I will talk about every day things that marketers inside organizations can begin to do to transform their communications into two-way, opt in conversations with customers. Many of the stories I will share draw from personal experience as an insider in corporate America — it can be done successfully even in conservative and highly regulated environments."

Two way communications in Corporate America are not that easy to get started and hats off to anyone who can pull this off as easily as Valeria does.   It's also not everyday someone is invited to Keynote at a Direct Marketing Association event and I'm really happy she's the keynote - I won't be there but I kinda wish I was.

In a way, I see the possibility the DMA, via Valeria, can contribute to the Web Analytics Associations Social Media Committee which I direct and vice versa.

Nice study quoted by WebAnalyticsbook on User Generated Content on How companies can make the most of user-generated content  by McKinsey.

What it tells me is that adoption numbers for User Generated Content start small, and it's better to think small, first.  Get a couple of people involved who are really engaged about generating content and that will spread, if you let it (or maybe, even if you don't).

If we look at Second Life, for example, there are small numbers of avatars that visit any island, relative to what most Websites get, especially if it's a Corporate Island.   On the other hand, the metrics used to determine engagement can't be broken down to numbers of "engaged" visitors as much as quality of engagement - because the numbers will be small, to begin with.

But as time goes on, engagement, be it in a Virtual World, or on a Website will expand.

According to Sebastian over at WebAnalyticsBook:

Findings of the study were:

1. The contributions of a small percentage of website members get engaged with the site and produce content.

2. Over time, participation rates throughout the user group increase. In 2004, for example, 90 percent of the contributions to Wikipedia came from just 2 percent of its users; by 2006, the top 2.5 percent of them were responsible for only 60 percent of all new content.

At SES San Jose next month a User Generated Content session and it's link to The Long Tail will be presented for the very first time, according to Andrew Goodman at Traffick. I took a look at Goodman's  Very Early Plug for User-Generated Content Panel at San Jose and thought the writeup was quite good - almost as if being at the session is not necessary as he'd given most of the content away in his post.

I'm all for that - most of going to Search Engine Strategies is to talk with people - you don't actually get much new information - except maybe this stuff (below).

Content Track
User Generated Content & Search
Looking for good content to please search engines but don't have a lot to spend. How about turning to your users? Discover the wonderful world of user generated content!

Speakers:

• Andrew Goodman, Principal, Page Zero Media
• Matt Mcgee, SEO Manager, Marchex
• Lee Odden, CEO, TopRank Online Marketing

Andrew Goodman is right about the prominent UGC sites being the most visible one's in search …. it's just that we did not think about the content as User Generated … but what does Flickr, YouTube, WikiPedia all have in common?

And from an SEO perspective, what could be better than having a zillion pages all with different content on it…usually written by different individuals …. what better way to draw crawlers deep into our site - and get a lot of residual traffic.

The fact is that's how my blog works too.  I write a lot - and I continue to get traffic on posts I did over a year go on Who is looking for Cassie, Ashlee Simpson's nose job, the perceived personality of people with different hair styles…and any number of other things I've blogged about since beginning this blog.

 "..The job of search engines is often to find deep, relevant content on highly specific topics. UGC sites are often perfect fits for what searchers are looking for. Yet in the world of "SEO," talk is often a narrow, pinched description of "SEO-ifying" a corporate or small business website; or alternatively, of optimizing writer-generated and editorial-generated content for search engines. But the above are obviously the most wildly successful businesses you can imagine, when it comes to the potential for rapid growth through organic search referrals down the long tail. They have their own challenges and success trajectories, and as my friend Mike Grehan would say, it has nothing to do with an H1 tag."

The Long Tail

I found this user generated Flash game at PlayMyGame to be very interesting - to say the least!   At any rate - you can take a swipe at me by pressing the A, S, or D keys (the Space Bar is for blocking).

Seriously, the idea has possibilities because people are more engaged when they can play games - I think the architects who I have had as clients could have benefited by this approach.  Also my current clients in the travel industry - IE: Trip to Ireland / Scotland - can benefit from searching for a "pot of gold" in a travel package …. it's not so far fetched - the tools almost are ready for something like this.

Add a dash of Social Networking - people uploading their videos of trips to a travel package - or people uploading videos of their built houses based on an architects plans - and you have the beginnings of the way you need to market now.   But it all starts with getting people engaged and there's nothing a game to do it.

Go ahead, take a punch at me - the game even gives me a back eye bruised upper lip.  I read about PlayMyGame.com from TechCrunch - which has a bit more of a write up than I have …. figure I'd go right for the action!

Since being elected to the Board of Directors of the Web Analytics Association I've started to think about what kind of Social Media tools would benefit WAA members seeking to communicate with each other - to add value to the membership.

One example that comes to mine is what the New York times did with it's travel section on going to Paris and where to stay (I happen to be going to Paris tomorrow, BTW).

Readers were asked to contribute suggestions - to contribute content - and it was focused on a subject (which makes it a little different than a blog post with comments).

There's also a lot of content created by The Times with attractions on what to see, where to eat, where to stay and nightlife (with user ratings).  For example, Paris Nightlife Listings are listed and rated by readers - this is a level of "engagement".  Personally, I find such listings extremely useful.

I think this approach would benefit the membership of the Web Analytics Association Membership site - with the subjects being created and voted upon by members and moderated by WAA volunteers on subjects such as first/third party cookie debate, mobile technology, user engagement you name it.

This is part of my notes of how I would build Social Media tools that benefit members - and there's an older model - Webmasterworld.com - which had a part of the site with content that only paid members could see as well as an email  system (sticky mail) and a user community.

I'm also thinking that KickApps might be one way to build the interactivity of a site - I haven't yet seen anything that is prepackaged version of what the NY Times Travel Section put together for Paris but I think it's worth looking into, at some point, to see if prepackaged solutions exist (I am thinking past what Magnify.net and Ning.com already provide out of the box).