Here comes everybody!

This is the title of the book written by Clay Shirkys discussing the development of the internet towards a user generated web – nothing new on first glace. This topic has been discussed for a long time already but the dimensions of these developments have changed dramatically over the course of the last two years. Websites which are based on content and activity produced by users have found their way into the mainstream. This is clearly visible for the English speaking net. In Germany this trends seems to be strong too.

Among the Top 50 websites of the world (End of 2007) are 15-20 (depending on the used definition) which almost exclusively depend on user generated content. To put this into perspective: DIGG.com counts 26 million individual visitors on its site per month and is on rank 32 of the top 50 list. Websites like Myspace, Wikipedia or Youtube are much higher in the ranking.

If one takes a look on such ranking for German websites one could assume that this trend is not reflected here. Among the Top 50 sites (AGOF) there are eight which are mostly user generated. But this angle does not take into account that most of this kind of usage form German users happens on English speaking and especially American websites. 3.6% of all Myspace users and 7% of all visitors to Wikipedia.org are from Germany. Keeping this in mind this kind of internet use seems to be in the mainstream in Germany as well.

Of course not all of these users are active in the sense that they provide content themselves but the importance of user generated media for the net is obvious. Maybe Clay Shirky should call the second version of this book “Here is everybody”!

Tags: Clay Shirky, digg, Myspace, UGC, User Generated Content, Wikipedia