In iMedia today, Hitwise’s LeeAnn Prescott has a nice overview of user-generated content trends and data from 2006. Here’s my related post: Social Media, Get Used to It.
Now that everyone is a convert (or will be) to the power and importance of community, the challenge becomes gaining genuine participation and loyalty when every other publisher wants you to register, set up a profile and start sharing their content with your friends.
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Related: Social network for teenage girls, Piczo, has raised $11 million in a second funding round and claims 10 million users in the US and UK. From my previous post on Piczo:
Piczo CEO Jeremy Verba discussed the site’s emphasis on safety and self-expression. Safety is important but self-expression is a key concept. There are really three things driving social networking right now: novelty, creativity (self-expression) and utility. Once the novelty of all this wears off (at some point), the sites that promote self-expression and/or offer real utility to users will be the winners in the “space.”
Screenwerk 