Principled Innovation LLC

Ben is half right

October 11th, 2006

I am in Dallas tonite, preparing to speak for an association tomorrow. It’s been a long day, so I’ll keep this post brief.

I just watched Ben’s YouTube video podcast on, well, YouTube’s deal with Google. In his podcast, Ben asks why associations aren’t benefiting from user created content (UCC) quite as much as YouTube. After all, he argues, UCC is a central element of what associations offer and we’ve been doing it for many more years that YouTube.

Well, Ben is half right.

Sure, volunteers contribute much of the knowledge base that associations enjoy. But I would not characterize their work as user created content in the Web 2.0 sense of the term. For one thing, YouTube is all about the long tail. It is a place where anyone, regardless of standing or skill level, can freely, quickly and easily post a video dealing with pretty much any subject matter that isn’t pornographic or inappropriate in other ways. What YouTube and other sites built on peer production have taught us is that talent is not a prerequisite for success. Some of the more entertaining videos on YouTube are terrible in some manner: terrible production, terrible audio, terrible content. But if they entertain us, who cares if they stink? As Chris Anderson says in The Long Tail, everyone’s tastes and interests depart from the mainstream somewhere, and anyone can offer something to attract, engage and satisfy them. It is these fringy viewers/producers, people hungry for something really different, who have helped YouTube achieve a monthly download rate of 100 million videos.

Contrast this approach with the generalized way that associations typically pursue content creation. Depending on the project, we may form a committee, task force, team, work group, council or some other artificial structure that makes it possible for the association to control the outcome. After deliberating on the kind of content that should be created, assignments are made and material is produced. Since the entire process is put together and run by organizational insiders, you can be sure that no risks will be taken. And since few if any outsiders are involved, only the agreed-upon content will be created. Of course, none of this may matter at all, because the association may take 6, 9, 12 or more months to make sure everything is “fine” with the content before it is released to the audience. Quite different from YouTube I’d say.

I will expand on some of these themes in future posts. For right now, however, let me simply say that while associations may have “content created by volunteers,” we don’t have true UCC like YouTube.

It’s really late right now and I’m going to conclude. I will write more on this topic soon.

Entry Filed under: Principled Innovation Blog, What's New?, Social Media, Audioblogs & Podcasts, Innovation, Associations, The Association Innovator, Google