Articles by Heather Clancy

There was a report out of Gartner late last month that estimated between 46 percent and 83 percent of Internet browsers/visitors/whatever-you-want-to-call them now engage with “consumer-generated content” at least once per month.

Gartner’s definition of this content includes blogs, podcasts and wikis as well as all manner of rating systems, recommendations and user reviews.

Not surprisingly, teenagers were more likely to engage with these sorts of media. Moreover, the percentage of U.S. adults who engage in this type of content at least once a week was lower than their counterparts in either France or the United Kingdom. Gartner suggests that this may be due to the novelty factor abroad.

Separate, but similar, research from In-Stat earlier this year likewise points to an impending explosion of worldwide revenue from what it calls “user-generated content,” most notably videos you’d find on YouTube. Last year, it figures $80 million in revenue was attributable to this stuff. By 2011, however, it predicts sales of around $1.6 billion.

For creative types like myself, the sorts of people that the business side increasingly consider as just so much overhead, these numbers are both scary and scintillating.

I don’t know of any journalist, no matter whether their work takes the form of a lengthy feature article, a video dispatch, an opinion column or a review, who doesn’t love hearing from someone who is reading or watching what they have to say.

I’ve had people walk up to me in airports to take issue with something I wrote, which is a little scary from a privacy standpoint. But from a professional level, it’s a thrill. “Hey,” I think, “THEY READ ME. They care.” Because, after all, most journalists get into the profession in order to touch people, in order to share information. In the world of print, our words mostly went into this void. Lots of guesswork went on. Focus groups were conducted.

Online, of course, everything has changed. I receive daily statistics for the green technology blog (“GreenTech Pastures”) I write on ZDNet. In an instant, I can see how many people are reading about certain topics; which strike a chord and which fall flat. The rating and comment system, meanwhile, tells me if I’m doing my job thoroughly enough. Often, I will think of an entirely new subject to write about as a result of a post. Or, I’ll kick myself to do a little more research if I’m missed an angle.

In my past life as the editor of channel news publication CRN, I made more contacts as a result of my editorial columns and video Webcasts than any other activity during my close to 18 years of covering the high-tech distribution channel. Because I had opened myself up in some way, readers felt like they could approach me.

Which brings me back to the real point of this column and the question that publishers love to ask themselves when staring at spreadsheets that detail declining print advertising sales: Is this shift toward user-generated content a long-term phenomenon? Can the voice of our users/readers/visitors replace editorial resources? Can this movement be “monetized” in some way?

The answer to all of these questions, in my opinion, is a qualified “Yes.” But before you go firing all your writers and content creation folks, here are some simple realities.

As Gartner notes, many folks (especially adults) participating in the user-generated media movement aren’t actually creating what we’ve come to accept as “content.” That is, a story, or a video dispatch or a photographic montage. It’s important to remember that “content” in the user-generated media movement can be many things. It can be ratings on stories, feedback dialogues about a product or services, or about the most popular searches on a Web site. The fact is, though, people come to sites for a reason. And SOMEONE needs to be giving them that reason. We currently call those someones “editors” but they’re increasingly taking on the role of community “moderators”—monitoring feedback, analyzing trends and creating more reasons for the dialogue to continue.

Then there’s the whole matter of time. I don’t know about you, but keeping up with my Facebook profile and my LinkedIn Network contacts is very time-consuming. I visit both horribly infrequently, mainly because I have a real-life husband and a real-life hobby (a cappella singing) that takes up plenty of my non-work time. I haven’t even dreamed of setting up a MySpace page yet and my blogs (yes, plural) are challenging to update on a regular basis. Personally, I believe there is bound to be an adjustment.

Full disclosure. I LOVE magazines. I love touching them, looking through them, curling up with them on the couch. That will never change. But I also find the ongoing transition exhilarating. I feel like what I write is a better reflection of the community I’m interacting with; that, in turn, generates more feedback.

I believe that what most people look for in their media experience—an honest voice. And honesty, I believe, is what user-generated content is all about.

I know this blog entry will be read by a lot of people. Not because I’m an especially controversial columnist but because I am about to use the magic word: iPhone. 

 The King Fish folks asked me to opine about this topic because I am the classic mobile gadget nut. Someone who has owned basically every Palm device since the original Palm Pilot. Plus, full disclosure, I am also a die-hard fan of technology from Apple. My mother used to work there. I used a Lisa before I got my hands on the first Macs. I’ve used an Apple III. I did an internship with Apple marketing services during university. So, I’m hooked. Yes, I am one of the people who was fuming last week because I paid way too much for my iPhone in early July. No, I did not wait in line for it. Yes, I will absolutely use my Apple store credit to get something else from Apple.

Like every iPhone owner, I also have become a defacto demo rep. I’ve been approached in airports, in the supermarket, in Starbucks. Interestingly, the main thing people ask to see is the gravity-sensing feature: how the iPhone screen flips from vertical to horizontal and back again depending on how you hold it in relationship to the ground. Even right now, it is so logical and so way-cool that it takes my breath away.

My mother discovered a feature I didn’t know about when I was in Hawaii a couple of weeks ago: How you can shrink or explode what is displayed on the screen simply by pinching your fingers together on the glass. I know, pretty obvious, but I started using my iPhone so quickly when I bought it that I really didn’t study the owners’ manual.

The main question people ask me, and the one you probably care about most, is how the iPhone behaves as a business tool.

My answer: about as well as the Mac.

For one thing, if you’re surgically attached to your BlackBerry or Treo, then the iPhone is definitely not for you. Thumbing isn’t so easy, although the virtual keyboard does become easier to use pretty quickly and the self-correcting feature is used pretty much regularly. But this is not a device meant for instant e-mail junkies.

Another thing that perplexes me: Why on earth must I return to the main screen every time I want to switch to a different application? I was so spoiled by the Treo’s quick access key, that this annoys me pretty much every time I pick the iPhone up.

The iPhone does basic e-mail pretty well, but I’m a free agent, so I don’t have corporate networks to contend with or set up. It does support IMAP, POP and Exchange servers, though, so a small business would probably have pretty good luck with it. One thing I haven’t figured out how to enable: accepting calendar requests or meeting invitations, which has been the bane of my existence over the roughly two months I’ve been using my HeathPhone. Of course, that’s more a function of the basic Macintosh e-mail client that I use, I suppose, and not necessarily the iPhone. I need to migrate to something better, but I haven’t had the time to research it.

One feature that I do believe will become requisite for other mobile smart phones: WiFi support. The ability to hop on and off networks at will, defaulting to my AT&T Edge service when necessary, is pretty compelling. The fact that it happens seamlessly is wonderful. This has implications for cutting voice communications costs. Imagine using the WiFi network available in one of your branch offices. Moreover, WiFi support means you can get to Web applications easily, if you’re willing to squint at the screen. Heck, WiFi has already shown up in the newest iPods, so you can see where this is going.

Using my iPhone, I’ve managed to submit entries to my GreenTech Pastures blog at ZDNet pretty easily, and I’ve even checked my checking account balance from the road. (My bookmarks have carried over from the Safari browser I use via the iTunes sync feature.) NetSuite pretty quickly came out with iPhone support for its business automation applications right after the product released, and some of my friends have pointed me to widget applications that I could use. One of those applications, www.flickim.com, provides instant messaging functionality (one of the things I miss most from using a Treo 650). Another application called Files2Phone from 1stWorks will let you grab documents, audio and other media files from your desktop remotely. One thing I long for: A way to put my To-Do list on my iPhone. Haven’t figured that out yet.

So, there definitely are innovators trying business-ify the iPhone around me. I’m not complaining. But there is a major caveat: I’m using two Macs to run my freelance business. I’m not so sure my iPhone would play so well if I lived in a Windows world.