Those wonderful numbers guys at Forrester Research — the best source of social media information and studies, in my opinion — have been at it again. PC World lays out some of the numbers presented in the Forrester’s latest Social Technographics report:
Social media ‘creators,’ which Forrester defines as users who have a blog, upload videos and music and write articles, shrunk from 24 percent of the U.S. online population in 2009 to 23 percent in the second quarter of this year, according to data from the report.
‘Critics,’ those who rate and review products, post comments on others’ blogs, participate in discussion forums and collaborate on wikis, dropped from 37 percent to 33 percent.
Likewise, ‘collectors,’ Internet users who subscribe to syndicated feeds, tag Web pages and photos and in general organize content for the benefit of other users, fell from 21 percent to 19 percent, Forrester said.
The majority of growth seems to have been amongst the “joiners” and the “conversationalists” — those new to social media and those who communicate through short messages such as Twitter or Facebook status updates. As a content creator myself, both professionally and as a hobby, I find this very interesting. It is, of course, easier to share links to content online than it is to create something of quality. I’ve noticed this in my own behavior. Since the advent of Twitter and Facebook’s recent explosive growth, I often find myself far more likely to use those than the traditional blog outlets. As a result, my posting on non-client blogs has declined over the past few years.
Ramon Nuez of The Huffington Post hits on one good reason for this:
Those individuals that were creating content because it was fun — quickly come to realize that there is a great deal of work that goes into creating good content. You couple that with the lack of revenue and you quickly begin to see why the ranks of content creators has thinned out.
This is, in my experience, one of the great causes of what I call “blogger burnout.” While some of us manage to push through and continue to put new content online, for others, many hours + lots of work + no financial return = burnout. Unless it is something the person is very passionate about, or that person is one of the few who have managed to effectively monetize their efforts.
Nuez speculates on where this is going:
What does this mean for the future of social media — as the dust settles we will be left with a population of prosumers. These are individuals that are not only producing quality content — like Soldier Knows Best — but have found multiple avenues to monetize their digital properties.
I’m inclined to agree. The “prosumers” will become a new link in the content chain, and we will see more plateauing amongst other categories of users. On a personal note, I don’t intend to slow down. One reason I love what I do is because I love creating. How about you? Have you found yourself more likely to share than to create over this past year or two? Please share your thoughts.
Source: “Where Have All the Content Creators Gone?,” The Huffington Post, 09/29/10
Source: “Forrester: Social Media Content Creators Down in U.S.,” PC World, 09/28/10
Source: “Introducing The New Social Technographics,” Forrester Research, 09/01/10
Image by Mike Licht NotionsCapital.com, used under its Creative Commons license.