The Pew Internet in American Life project just published a new report about Web 2.0, Riding the Waves of “Web 2.0” (pdf). The report does a pretty good job of defining the concepts of the new web, borrowing heavily from O’Reilly (who seems to have corner limited rights to the term).
This uncharacteristically short report offers some interesting data. Still, only 8% of Internet users have created or worked on their own blog. I only find that interesting (Feb – Apr 2006). What I find to be important is that between a quarter and a third of Internet users have contributed in some way to the global network, from taking “..materials found online — like songs, text or images — and remixed it into your own artistic creation” (18%) to sharing “..files from your own computer with others online” (26%) to rating “..a product, service or person using an online rating system” (30%). We are increasingly feeling like participants in the network of content, not merely consumers.
Another part of the report that I found interesting was a graph comparing the number of Wikipedia users, and users of Encarta. Why do people seem to be flocking to the Wikipedia?
- Is it because of the buzz?
- Is it because it’s new and must be better?
- Is it because there are more articles?
- Is it because the articles tend to be richer?
- Is it because the information is more up-to-date?
- Is it because it belongs to us?
What do you think?
technorati tags:warlick, education, wikipedia, pew
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Hi
For me, it’s because it always comes up earlier in the Google search.
This is interesting, Leslie, since Google’s relevance ranking is based primarily on the number of other web sites that link to the hit.
— dave —
Hence the accelerating distance between the two lines on your graph. I guess that leads to the question: what happened to cause this widening gulf? Which is what you asked in the first place . . .
Leslie’s right of course for the quick numbers Wikipedia racked up. People would put a word in Google, and they’d get a Wikipedia hit. I do find myself coming back to it more and more though, on purpose. There’s so much good stuff.