Smugmug's Web 2.0 participation rate?

greenpea

I read this interesting article in MSNBC. It suggests that participation in Web 2.0 sites is far less than believed, with most visitors to Web 2.0 sites coming just to look, not to participate. It mentions 0.16% of users to YouTube are uploading video and 0.02% are image uploaders.

For smugmug I wonder what the percentage of smugmug visitors who are subscribers vs. non-subscribers. One way of looking at this, would be what percentage of visitors to smugmugs sites view the site while logged on vs. those who are not logged on.

Andy

greenpea wrote:

For smugmug I wonder what the percentage of smugmug visitors who are subscribers vs. non-subscribers.

Our About page lists paying subscribers:
http://www.smugmug.com/aboutus/about.mg

And we have millions of unique visitors per day to the site.

I think a key difference between us and any of the aforementioned websites, is that we charge a fee, and those do not.

StevenV

I'm not sure how content-creator-visits vs just-a-viewer visits would differ between "web 2.0" sites and sites still using older technologies.

An "old web" newspaper site, for example, might have 20 "contributors" and several thousand visitors each day. YouTube's front page might feature videos shot by 20 different contributors and be viewed by several thousand visitors.

I just don't know that people use "web 2.0-ness" as a criteria to decide if they're going to visit a site.


or am I misunderstanding the question?

greenpea

Andy wrote:

I think a key difference between us and any of the aforementioned websites, is that we charge a fee, and those do not.

That's true. I didn't consider that.

greenpea

StevenV wrote:

I'm not sure how content-creator-visits vs just-a-viewer visits would differ between "web 2.0" sites and sites still using older technologies.

An "old web" newspaper site, for example, might have 20 "contributors" and several thousand visitors each day. YouTube's front page might feature videos shot by 20 different contributors and be viewed by several thousand visitors.

I just don't know that people use "web 2.0-ness" as a criteria to decide if they're going to visit a site.


or am I misunderstanding the question?

I think the article was just defining web 2.0 as a site where visitors to the site participate in the creation of the site, or participate in adding content to the site. So it was suggesting that the percentage of active participants to such sites is far smaller than than expected.

Although it seems like Don MacAskill generally refers to a web 2.0 as a fully AJAX-ified site.