User-Generated sites to explode in next 5 years

According to a recent study by emarketer.com, the user-generated content/ web 2.0 era is yet to hit full stride.

Currently 70 million internet users will create some form of online content this year.

In 2006, user-generated sites earned $450 million. By 2011 that number will be an estimated $4.3 billion.

What does this mean?

There are going to be even more web start-up social communities.

Most are going to be gimmicky and bland.

Some will be gimmicky and bland, but find the right gimmick to reach a bunch of people.

A few will provide a nice service and fail.

Some will provide a nice service and flourish.

A couple will seperate themselves from the pack.

Who?

Hopefully those that bring a little bit of originality. Provide freelancers with an opportunity to make cash. So many of the social communities are headed by business moneys that only care about cash.

Hopefully a few sites with creative, innovative inspiration will make it; inspiring others.

External Link Resources

emarketer.com article

Sports Sites look for fresh ground to plow

Rivals.com was recently bought out by Yahoo.com. Rivals is a college football/high school recruiting site that has a bunch of affiliated team sites. The purchase was for around $100 million.

News Corp. owns Scout.com, Rivals.com main competitor. Interestingly, NewsCorp. reportedly offered to swap MySpace.com for roughly 25% of Yahoo.

So, in essence, these companies would be partly owned by the same company. What they want is a younger audience. Here's an idea, "lower the subscription fees!"

External Link Resources

Killer Startups Rank Best Sports Community!

The Future of Video Sharing Research and Study

If you're in the business of technology and the internet, you may be interested in some true blue research results conducted comScore on the future of video sharing and streaming media. With the influx of web advertising, there has also been an influx of (much needed) high quality internet research and study. If you want to stay on the top of this ever changing industry, you should stay on top of what the people (your potential audience, traffic, clients) are doing with

The studycomScore conducted was the Video Metrix service of U.S. video streaming activity of up-and-coming video-sharing sites. The study examined six video-sharing sites that did not make the top 10 U.S. video properties for the month, but reveals that French site Dailymotion.com had a particularly strong position in the U.S. video-sharing market in April 2007

Wondering what the next big company will be in the industry of web video sharing? Well, according to Eric Hunter, comScore's executive vice president,

"There's been a great deal of speculation in the marketplace about which site is the next YouTube, and each of these next-tier sites has a particular draw... Dailymotion.com is stating the strongest case at the moment, both domestically and internationally."

Here's some details on the report

Selected Video-Sharing Sites (Total U.S. - Home/Work/University Locations April 2007)
Property	Unique Video Streamers (000)	Video Streams Initiated (000)	Minutes Per Streamer
Dailymotion.com	4,729	49,335	59.7
Metacafe.com	3,738	33,183	15.1
Break.com	3,138	32,164	16.8
Heavy Networks	2,619	5,964	3.2
Revver.com	2,607	8,719	5.4
Veoh.com	1,847	14,554	104.2
Source: comScore Video Metrix

I have personally come across an interesting video and media sharing website, called The News Room. It's too much to describe here, check it out for yourself: The News Room Video Sharing

For more information on the study conducted, statistics and more quotes from Eric Hunter, visit the Research Brief Blog

External Link Resources

thenewsroom.com
www.blogs.mediapost.com/research_brief/

Related Technology News Posts

MySpace Takes Action Against Copyrighted Content
Viacom Sues Google for $1 Billion
The Google Youtube Merger

Why is Google Adsense Important for Bloggers

To know why Adsense is essential for your content sites is to know first how this works.

The concept is really simple, if you think about it. The publisher or the webmaster inserts a java script into a certain website. Each time the page is accessed, the java script will pull advertisements from the Adsense program. The ads that are targeted should therefore be related to the content that is contained on the web page serving the ad. If a visitor clicks on an advertisement, the webmaster serving the ad earns a portion of the money that the advertiser is paying the search engine for the click.

The search engine is the one handling all the tracking and payments, providing an easy way for webmasters to display content-sensitive and targeted ads without having the hassle to solicit advertisers, collect funds, monitor the clicks and statistics which could be a time-consuming task in itself. It seems that there is never a shortage of advertisers in the program from which the search engine pulls the Adsense ads. Also webmasters are less concerned by the lack of information search engines are providing and are more focused in making cash from these search engines.

The first reason why Adsense is essential for content sites is because it already has come a long way in understanding the needs of publishers and webmasters. Together with its continuous progression is the appearance of more advanced system that allows full ad customization. Webmasters are given the chance to choose from many different types of text ad formats to better complement their website and fit their webpage layout.

The different formatting enables the site owners the possibility of more click through from visitors who may or may not be aware of what they are clicking on. It can also appeal to the people visiting thus make them take that next step of looking up what it is all about. This way the people behind the Adsense will get their content read and making profit in the process.

The second reason is the ability of the Adsense publishers to track not only how their sites are progressing but also the earnings based on the webmaster-defined channels. The recent improvements in the search engines gives webmasters the capability to monitor how their ads are performing using customizable reports that has the capacity to detail page impressions, clicks and click-through rates. Webmasters and publishers can now track specific ad formats, colors and pages within a website. Trends are also easily spotted.

With the real-time reporting at hand, the effectiveness of the changes made will be assessed quickly. There would be time to sort out the contents that people are making the most clicks on. The ever-changing demands would be met while generating cash for the webmasters and publishers. The more flexible tools are also allowing webmasters to group web pages by URL, domain, ad type or category, which will provide them some accurate insight on which pages, ads and domains are performing best.

The last and final reason is that the advertisers have realized the benefits associated having their ads served on targeted websites. Thus increasing the possibility that a prospective web surfer will have an interest in their product and services. All because of the content and its constant maintenance. As opposed to those who are no using Adsense in their sites, they are given the option of having other people do their content for them, giving them the benefit of having successful and money-generating web sites.

Adsense is all about targeted content, the more targeted your content is, the more target the search engines’ ads will be. There are some web masters and publishers who are focused more on their site contents and how best to maintain them rather than the cash that the ads will generate for them. This is the part where the effectiveness is working its best.

There was a time when people were not yet aware of the money to be achieved from advertisements. The cash generated only came into existence when the webmasters and publishers realized how they can make Adsense be that generator. In those days, the content were the most important factors that is taken quite seriously. It still is. With the allure of money, of course.