
I'm Tired of Creating Your Content - wheels
http://babblingvc.typepad.com/pjozefak/2010/11/im-tired-of-creating-your-content.html
======
CoreDumpling
_On the other hand, the value of the reviews on these sites goes down the
older they get._

On Amazon it seems like the opposite is true. Because of their meta-review
process, where users can flag reviews as helpful or not, it seems like old and
classic reviews tend to float to the top, while recent ones have a significant
hurdle to overcome before they make it to the front page. See for example
here: <http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0262011530>

(Admittedly, users can also be fickle and support other kinds of reviews for
different reasons, cf. [http://www.amazon.com/Tuscan-Whole-Milk-
Gallon-128/dp/B00032...](http://www.amazon.com/Tuscan-Whole-Milk-
Gallon-128/dp/B00032G1S0))

~~~
executive
Yes, but Amazon's reviews are for products.. not hotels. Hotels get older and
crappier thus newer reviews are more valuable.

~~~
andre3k1
I would necessarily say that hotels crappier as they age, but the service from
hotels is elastic.

The same hotel visited 2 different times could prove very different. The same
book purchased twice, on the other hand, will read the same.

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ianb
He misses another benefit of writing reviews: rewarding good businesses. And
even, in the case of a thoughtful review, enabling a diversity of services --
simple star reviews can't express the give and take of different kinds of
service, and so a decrepit-but-lovable hotel can't be distinguished from a
decrepit-and-neglected hotel. Reviews make it possible for people to find the
right hotel (or any other service) for their wishes, and they don't have to
rely on crude measures like brand loyalty.

I honestly can't decide what the personal benefit is. If reviews can make a
difference in a business, then _one_ review can make a difference -- unlike
"likes" or votes or stars a review is not automatically aggregated, it is
specifically read by other people. So there is real potential that a review
can positively impact a business you like, and provide you real benefit as a
result. The negative impact of a bad review has no direct benefit that I can
think of -- you will never return, and the only happiness you might derive is
schadenfreude if the business's fortunes decline. Either way though there is a
sense of satisfaction, which seems to be the primary reason people submit
reviews.

~~~
thetrumanshow
Repeat business is how you reward a business for being awesome. Its over-and-
above to give them word-of-mouth recommendations or to post positive reviews.

In general I don't think its wrong to ask for something in return for staking
your reputation on a recommendation.

~~~
ianb
Wait... are you proposing that you get a kickback for your positive review?
I'm not sure that will work so well...

~~~
thetrumanshow
"I want direct benefits....free parking, a free night, coffee for free or
dessert, discounts and so forth"

If you provide illiquid perks for participating in a review process, I don't
see much wrong with that. If they were handing out cash, then yes, that is a
grey area.

~~~
stonemetal
Yeah just like those video game mag writers who got to go to flight school for
their reviews of an air combat game. Ohh wait, paying people in things of
value is similar to paying them in cash, even if they would have never bought
those things in the first place. Especially if said perks can be sold for cash
latter( free laptop for review etc.)

Paying for reviews is paying for reviews integrity compromised, trust lost.

~~~
thetrumanshow
The OP described perks that were illiquid, of low value, and generally non-
transferrable in nature. I think that is what we're talking about.

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donall
It seems to me that providing monetary incentives (or incentives with a clear
monetary value, like a cup of coffee in a specific restaurant) for submitting
reviews would attract the wrong sort of crowd.

An entire new class of reviewers would start using these services. One example
would be people who submit a review of a place just before they arrive to get
their free coffee. A more worrying case would be users who write a script to
generate and submit reviews automatically. Generating text that _looks_ like a
review is not difficult and, unlike spam mail, it wouldn't require plugging a
product (which is what gives spam its distinct spammy flavour :)) or
generating millions per day.

In practice, it would be very difficult to filter that sort of thing out and
there would be so much noise that the value of the site to real users would
plummet.

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dasil003
I empathize with the feeling here, but it seems to me like the author is
detached from both the reality of user motivations and the economics of UGC
sites.

There are lots of reasons people use sites and create content, and I can't
think of any case where they are monetary. Even something like Mechanical Turk
I believe has a significant non-monetary aspect to it considering the pittance
that people make doing it (granted it's supplemental income if they are stuck
in a under-utilized desk job all day). The fact is that by boycotting content
creation he is just joining the silent majority of people who don't post
anything. Even on Facebook where there is pretty much nothing _but_ UGC I
suspect the majority never post anything. The question of what motivates
people probably has a different answer on every site, and it's certainly worth
exploring, but the answer is not to be found in what this guy thinks he
deserves.

It's sort of funny how in a few short years there is a growing contingent of
people who have gone from fevered excitement over new free services to
bitterness over how much those free services are making from their content in
just a few short years. But let's examine the economics of the situation. How
much profit does Facebook make from a status update? A like? A comment? How
much does TripAvisor make from a review? I don't have any numbers, but by any
reasonable napkin calculation the economic value of a single user's
contribution is just not significant. It's probably less than you would be
willing to give a bum on the street. If Facebook makes $1 billion revenue off
500 million users, that makes you worth $2 a year not even counting expenses.
Of course all users are not equal, so maybe you're an extremely heavy user and
you're worth $10 even after expenses. What kind of economic incentive could
Facebook afford to give you that wouldn't make you feel like a worthless cog
in their machine?

~~~
andre3k1
I agree with you on everything except the following sentence:

> What kind of _economic_ incentive could Facebook afford to give you that
> wouldn't make you feel like a worthless cog in their machine?

Must the incentive be economic? Facebook provides value to its users through a
social incentive. Likewise, the incentive to share an article on HN or Reddit
is your Karma score and to engage in a lively discussion on the topic. Neither
of the two is economic.

An interesting point that you failed to make when discussing the economics of
the situation is the following, regardless of whether or not a user
contributes to TripAdvisor or Qype he can still peruse the site. So my
question is the following, what incentive does a user have to contribute
reviews to TripAdvisor or Qype versus simply reading others' reviews?

~~~
dasil003
Agreed. The reason I said economic is because that's what the OA seems to feel
like he deserves, but to be fair he does leave the door open for more clever
incentives. However my thesis would be that the OA is already a lost cause and
not someone worth pursuing.

As far as the incentive to write a review on TripAdvisor, from personal
experience I'd say the overwhelming incentive is to either benefit or stick it
to an establishment you visited.

~~~
andre3k1
I've always wondered if reviews are negatively skewed. Sadly, there's much
more incentive for me to go on Yelp and write about how awful my meal was than
about it being decent.

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mistermann
I'd be happy if TripAdvisor jkust put a little effort into making theirs site
useable. For the reviews, I think they are trying to _minimize_ the content
per screen (I suppose to load more pages and display more ads?) I can
understand trying to maximize revenue, but the combination of increasingly
poor/fake reviews with the (deliberate) bad user interface is, for me, pushing
that site to the point of uselessness.

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VladRussian
time for web2.5 - where user generated content would really belong to users,
ie. sites like Yelp would be replaced by anonymous intelligent (as in search
and link/references/reviews rating) P2P style trackers who would return to the
reviews searching person the reviews (actually the trackers will return
references/links to the user's browsing software which will do actual "fetch"
of the reviews' content) which would "belong" to the original reviewers and
served from their blogs, personal computers/phones/VPS/"spaces" (and
accompanied by review creator's adsense ads if they choose so). The reviewer's
reviews and ratings thus wouldn't be spread among different unconnected sites.
Instead all user's reviews and ratings would be kept at one place if the user
choose so. Ie. the traffic will get driven to the reviewer's "place" in this
reviewer centric schema. Think Diaspora (the web2.5) vs. Facebook (web2.0).

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sebg
"If you want my reviews because your business runs on user-generated-content,
you are going to need to do better. Stroking my ego no longer works."

I think this is missing the point. Businesses like four-
square/yelp/blogs/social media/etc exist not to stroke anybody's ego, they
exist to let users have their friends or random strangers stroke their egos.

Complaining that a business isn't stroking your ego should tell the business
that they aren't making it easy enough for your friends to stroke your ego.

Facebook does this brilliantly. My friend bakes a pie and then myself an a ton
of other people pile on and tell them it looks good, tasty, when are they
making me one, etc.... Facebook doesn't stroke my friend's ego, facebook makes
it ridiculously easy for "friends" to stroke my friend's ego.

~~~
cwp
He's not complaining that his ego isn't sufficiently stroked. He's saying that
ego-stroking is insufficient to motivate him to keep writing reviews.

~~~
VladRussian
fine distinction point which i somehow still don't get

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gabrielroth
_I want direct benefits....free parking, a free night, coffee for free or
dessert, discounts and so forth._

I'm pretty sure that small rewards (free coffee) would make people less likely
to post reviews, and large benefits (a free night's stay in a hotel) wouldn't
be cost-effective.

~~~
andrew1
If RandomHotelBookingWebsite.com announces that for every five reviews you
write you'll earn a $5 credit which you can use for any booking on the site,
why would that make you less likely to write a review? I can see that it might
not make someone more likely to write a review (why bother for $5?), but why
would it stop you if you were going to anyway?

~~~
mikeklaas
The same reason that levying a fine on late daycare parents increases the
frequency that they will pick up their kids late.

Monetary incentives tend to displace intangible incentives. This isn't
necessarily a bad thing, IF you've designed your monetary incentives
correctly...

~~~
frossie
No,it's not the same thing as the daycare example. The issue with daycare late
fines is that they allow a person to "pay off" bad behavior, therefore
reducing guilt and therefore increasing it's likelihood.

Here the OP is discussing rewarding "good" behavior. The psychology is not
necessarily the same.

I am surprised at the negative comments on this thread. The feelings the OP is
experiencing are real and even legitimate. The reality is that sites do profit
massively from user contributed content, and an asymmetry in the perceived
value of the transaction can clearly exist.

Frankly it amazes me that it has taken this long for rumblings like this to
appear.

------
espadagroup
This is very true, honestly when you think about it you really are giving a
lot of time just for "ego stroking". Implementing a nice high level tier of
benefits for those who contribute the most could be great.

For example if you reach a certain threshold of generating content you get
entered into a premium tier where you receive a once a month voucher for
things or whatever it is. Business's could give these deals to the service too
since they'd be rewarding their most adamant customers who are also the ones
who would be spreading the service through word of mouth.

Sure it takes a bit more work for the service but user engagement would
benefit tremendously.

------
smalter
It's stone soup. I benefit from participating in Yelp because I like the
community (or used to) -- writing reviews and getting feedback -- and because
I read Yelp for reviews (or used to). The guys/girls who sent up the
infrastructure to make that happen should get some soup, too, and there's
nothing wrong with that.

I suppose if I were a pro user that created a disproportionate amount of
content, I'd complain more. But I don't think that's the point of the above
post. The article seems just to express fatigue with internet-related
obligations, which I can relate to. But it's couched in this weird resentful
language.

------
rapind
Rewards programs like airmiles are pretty successful. Seems to me you could
apply similar logic here. Giving back to your contributors would motivate
them.

~~~
panacea
I'm not sure incentivising reviewers is the problem here. It's the respect
given to 'pure' non-financially motivated advice that generates trust.

The democratization of information that the internet seems to promise is in
direct competition with paid-for "page-rank".

------
kevinskii
His "personal benefit" comes from reading others' reviews, which he admits he
does regularly.

------
crasshopper
Obvious. The only people who like 4sq are gadget-y people who derive so much
pleasure from playing with new things that they will re-arrange their lives to
do so.

------
Jach
Yeah, PG, give everyone with over 100 comments free startup funds!

