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User Filtered Content (UFC) is what Web 2.0 is about… and Digg is a UFC site

Ross Dawson, January 21, 2008 3:18 PM US PT

At the Crunchy awards last week Digg was named best User Generated Content (UGC) site. As many people pointed out since then, Digg is in fact not a user generated content site, since the people don’t submit content to the site, but links to other sites.

Allen Stern suggests that Digg is a UGC aggregator. Josh Catone thinks that UGC is perfectly accurate for Digg.

Back in 2006 I posted the notes to my speech at the Influence conference on Web 2.0 and User Filtered Content, pointing out that Web 2.0 is largely about users collectively filtering content after they have generated it. Earlier in the year the content section of our Future of Media Strategic Framework showed how both media and users create and filter content. Creating and filtering content are different activities.

I think it’s well time that User Filtered Content comes into its own as a term, and isn’t confused with User Generated Content.

6 Comments

John Jones said:

have you seen this?

http://www.readburner.com/stats.php

January 21, 2008 4:46 PM

Ross Dawson said:

Thanks John - yes it's a great example.

January 21, 2008 5:11 PM

Nic Hodges said:

Interesting that you should post this at the same time the issue of Digg using moderators is brough up by Duncan Riley and Valleywag ( http://valleywag.com/346263/diggs-secret-editors )

I guess the question then is (if the reports of moderators are true), does the use of moderators help filter UFC or does it completely contradict the idea of it?

January 21, 2008 5:59 PM

Ross Dawson said:

Interesting point Nic. If these are Digg's moderators whose activities are not transparent then it's not UFC, which is about mechanisms to enable all participants to collectively filter. This doesn't have to be entirely democratic in the sense of one vote per user - on Slashdot some people through their contribution have more sway.

Of course there's nothing sacrosanct about UFC - there's nothing wrong with filtering in other ways if it gives useful outcomes. But if you're pretending it's pure UFC and it's not, that's a different matter...

January 21, 2008 6:16 PM

Lauren Cooney said:

Hi Ross,

So if I self-select a widget or series of widgets to use on my blog, would that be a form of "user filtered content" or is it based on the audience selection rather than the individual user?

Lauren

January 21, 2008 7:09 PM

Ross Dawson said:

Hi Lauren, it's aggregated rather than individual filtering: collective behaviors allow us to find what's interesting or useful.

My definition of Web 2.0 is: “Distributed technologies built to integrate, that collectively transform mass participation into valuable emergent outcomes.” - the key is in the mechanisms that transform that mass participation into something useful (such as user filtered content).

For more see our Web 2.0 framework: http://www.rossdawsonblog.com/weblog/archives/2007/05/launching_the_w.html

January 21, 2008 8:27 PM

Ross Dawson is globally recognized as a leading futurist, entrepreneur, keynote speaker, strategy advisor, and bestselling author. He is Founding Chairman of four companies: professional services and venture firm Advanced Human Technologies, future and strategy consulting group Future Exploration Network, leading events firm The Insight Exchange, and influence ratings start-up Repyoot.

Ross is author most recently of Implementing Enterprise 2.0, the prescient Living Networks, which anticipated the social network revolution, and the Amazon.com bestseller Developing Knowledge-Based Client Relationships (click on the links for free chapter downloads). He is based in Sydney and San Francisco with his wife jewellery designer Victoria Buckley and two beautiful young daughters.