Neilsen reported in August that 5 of the top 10 fastest growing web sites consisted of user generated content: ImageShack, Heavy.com, Flickr, MySpace and Wkipedia all ranked in the top 10 with increases in unique audiences from July 2005 to July 2006 ranging from 181% to 233%. The folks @ Neilsen choose not to count Partypoker as a user generated content; I think one might argue that it is. If so, then 6 out of the top 10 would be UGC sites.
Interestingly we’re also reading stories of wide spread flight from the giant sites. Print and TV media (in case you’ve missed them) have been gleeful in reports of users who report being frustrated with the mass market sites such as MySpace.
This comes as no surprise to Web 2.0 folks such as Ellyssa Kroski who blogged back in April her expectation that with time people would grow tired of the giant communities and look for small groups that offered some filter on the noise of “online friends.” When you consider it, this trend differs little from community life in the non-virtual world. While some people are drawn to the whirl of the big city, others seek out the order of the suburbs or quiet of rural life—others choose to spend their weekdays in the city and then retreat to quieter realms on weekend. As social networking becoming a more ubiquitous part of online life, we can expect many users to seek communities of Goldilocks just right proportions—enough people I am interested in networking with and not too many.
Higher Education web communities possess the potential of offering just the sort of place many people are likely to seek—large enough to provide variety for both personal and professional interests, while not encompassing the globe. It’ll be interesting to see how things go.