Sorting it all out. Rating content quality on Websites – Part 1

Content Curation, User Created Content , 1 Comment

One of the more interesting and challenging aspects of creating Deep Content Websites is in the area of rating and prioritizing content. It is one of the items that make up The Three Main Areas of a Successful Deep Content Website. Sites that contain a lot of content need to have a way to sort out the wheat from the chaff, delivering high quality content quickly and efficiently.

Sorting it all out. Rating content quality on Websites - Part 1These days everything from books, business, movies, articles, videos, reviews, blog posts, pictures, Tweets, and Facebook posts are rated. Indeed, rating and prioritizing content has become the way to bring the most popular and highest quality content to the attention of users. The less time website users spend searching around for what they are looking for, the more time they have to enjoy and use your website.

Rating content is a bit more complicated than it first appears. The desired goal of a successful content rating system is to serve your users by providing high quality and relevant content. Delivering relevant content saves your users time, and builds trust, so they keep coming back to your site. There are a variety of ways to approach the problem, all with advantages and disadvantages:

1) Content that is rated and reviewed by users.
Having your users rate and review content with star ratings, likes, comments, and so forth, increases your user’s involvement with your website, which is always a good thing. Many people trust ratings from a large number of everyday folks like themselves, over ratings from professional reviewers. But, this approach can be fraught with problems if not designed and curated properly. It has the potential of being easily manipulated by those who create false reviews. News articles abound about these problems. Amazon.com has had huge problems with this issue and loads of bad press as a result. Forbes did an entire series just about Amazon’s fake reviews. (Article 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

2) Rating content behind the scenes using analytics, and other techniques.
Another way to go about rating content is to do it behind the scenes using human and technological methods. Analytics, looking at user behavior, can identify how often, and for how long content is viewed. The amount of sharing via email, Twitter, Facebook and other sites can be kept track of, giving a good idea of the popularity of a certain item of content. The New York Times actually has a page that identifies their most emailed, viewed, blogged, and searched news articles.

Rating of content by actual people can be used, but this ability is limited by the staffing size of a company. Some websites let some of their members, who are proven and serious users, review and rate content. This increases the amount of people curating the content, while still keeping the quality of the results high.

The actual reality, is that most websites use a combination of all of these techniques. Whatever methods are used, the more your website takes responsibility for this process, the happier your users will be. You need to sort it out for them, so that they can spend more time enjoying your website, and spend less time searching on the site. In future blog posts I will be looking at specific rating techniques used by websites, analyzing their advantages and disadvantages, and how well they succeed in delivering high quality content to their users.

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Is User Created Content the Gold Standard?… Sometimes.

User Created Content , , 4 Comments

Often, when I search the web for detailed knowledge regarding a particular subject, I find the most thorough and interesting content written by self-appointed, non-professional experts who have created their own websites, or post their content on themed websites. This user-created content is often far more detailed and informative than anything created by a professional website or an expert in the field.

An Example:
I love classical music, and I especially love the cantatas written by J.S. Bach. There are about 209 cantatas, a huge amount of music. So figuring out which ones to listen to, and which recordings to buy is a bit of a challenge. It turns out that the most useful information on the web regarding the Bach Cantatas is written by non-professional music lovers.

JS Bach playing guitarOn www.classica.net, Simon Crouch, has written an introduction to the cantatas, and has rated all 209 cantatas according to quality. The ratings are incredibly useful in determining which cantatas to explore. Simon is not a musician or a musicologist, simply a passionate lover of great music.

Aryeh Oron has created the Bach Cantatas Website as a collective, that has encyclopedic information about the Bach Cantatas. The content is written by all the members of this collective; completely user-created. There are no ads or sponsorships on this website. Its existence is purely for the appreciation of the Bach Cantatas.

After identifying which cantata recordings I may want to buy, I head over to Amazon.com to make my final decision by reading the informative and knowledgeable reviews, also created by users. My entire online inquiry into this subject has been satisfied by reading user-created content. Indeed in this case, user-created content was the only way to get a detailed view of this subject.

On the other hand, all of the articles written by professional music writers I discovered are basically brief, general overviews of the Bach Cantatas, or a review of a specific concert. Good information in another context, but not useful for my current inquiry.

There are certain situations where user-created content is not as useful. If I am looking for factual news articles, then I look to reputable news organizations. If I am wanting accurate medical information, I will trust medical websites more than opinions from average users.

But for many subjects, user-created is the gold standard, and provides the most detailed, impassioned, and interesting information available on the web.

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Deep Content Craving, or Wow! Have you seen this new app?

Deep Content Craving , 1 Comment

There is a frenzy that has taken over the internet in the last few years. Gone are the days when the web was simply a useful resource of tools and entertaining websites that took its place next to our other activities. It was there when we needed to use it, but not at the forefront of our lives.

Smart phones and tablets, along with the explosion of applications that address every life function, has changed all this. The iphone and the App Store was introduced in July 2008. In September 2008, there were 3,000 apps in the App Store, now there are 800,000. There were 1 billion downloads the first year of operation, by September 2012, there were 35 billion. In October 2008, Android Market, now called Google Play, opened its doors. There were 2,300 apps available in March 2009, now there are 800,000. By September of 2012, 25 billion downloads had been done on Google Play. These figures show the progression of the internet from a handy, part-time resource to something that has become like a third hand for many people.(Statistics from Wikipedia)

Kid in a Candy StoreThe explosion of a mind blowing variety of uses for smart phones, tablets, and personal computers, coupled with the near universal adoption of the internet by media, news, business, and cultural organizations, has set the stage for what I call Deep Content Craving, the desire to have a richer, more satisfying life experience through the use of personal computing devices.

The adoption and expectations of new apps and websites has reached a near ravenous state. Websites and apps like Tumblr, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat, Whatsapp, Kik and others are adopted by users with increasing speed. Millions of new users flock to these sites with the anticipation of a deeper, more entertaining personal experience. Users know that we are just in the beginning stages of this technology and that more amazing apps and websites are just around the corner, so they are constantly on the lookout for anything new.

The combination of new devices, new technologies, and universal adoption has created the perfect storm for the state of Deep Content Craving.

Deep Content Craving is:
- The desire for excellent content and easy access.
- The desire for improved usability and user experience.
- The desire for more advanced communication tools and new uses of technology.
- The desire for greater self-expression.

The process of Deep Content Craving is in its adolescent stage right now. Simple apps are becoming more complex. Usability is improving and becoming more integrated. Function is being combined and consolidated. Technologies continue to push the envelope of what is possible. Expect to see even faster adoption rates, and many cool new websites taking center stage and springing up out of nowhere.

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The Deep Content Qualities of WordPress

Portability , , , 3 Comments


Last week’s article in TechCrunch about the thousands of blog users who are moving their blogging over to WordPress from other blog platforms, made me realize that the staff at WordPress are doing some crucial things in providing a Deep Content Web experience to their users.

Matt Mullenweg, the founder of WordPress, WordPress Logotold TechCrunch, “The top two by far are Blogger and Tumblr, … In the past 30 days we’ve imported over 15 million posts. Tumblr and Blogger are always the two highest because they’re both good at introducing people to blogging, and in Blogger’s case they get huge promotion and integration from Google, but people quickly run into their limitations and look for a more flexible platform.”

In my blog post of February 25, “The Three Main Areas of a Successful Deep Content Website”, I wrote about the importance of giving users easy to use tools to collect, move, organize, and send their content. This is exactly what WordPress does. They make it easy for users to transfer their blog content from many other blogging platforms. Matt Mullenweg’s philosophy about this is, “I’ve always believed that if you make it easy for people to leave, they’re more likely to stay.” Instead of trying to lock their users into the WordPress platform, they meet their user’s needs with tools that provide portability and flexibility. They are thinking of their users first, not WordPress first.

WordPress also provides users with expansive functionality and a rock solid, dependable, and trustworthy platform. From Matt Mullenweg’s blog, “I’m very proud of the 8+ years we’ve been a home for, and protected, our users blogs. Protection covers many aspects: backups, scalability, security, speed, permalinks, mobile versions, forward-compatible markup, clean exports… the list goes on.” WordPress has created a package of tools that has, in turn, created users who trust WordPress.

Flexibility, portability, and trust, three crucial Deep Content qualities of WordPress.

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EU’s European Commission Proposes Data Portability Standards

Privacy , , , 1 Comment


Last month, of the New York EU FlagTimes, Natasha Singerwrote the article Protection Laws, an Ocean Apart, about the 2012, EU European Commission proposal to standardize personal privacy rights and standards. Most of the proposal is about internet privacy, but the section of her article that caught my eye reads, “The proposed new rules….would also provide some new rights, such as “data portability” – the right of consumers to easily transfer their text files, photographs and videos from one social network, or e-mail or cloud storage service, to another.”

The idea of creating unified portability standards across the internet, could bring many benefits to internet users, as well as some interesting consequences for the online marketplace. If users can easily import and export their content from one social network or website service to another, they can more easily switch to a new website or service that better serves their needs. Websites would no longer be as protected from competition if their customers could so easily move their content.

I decided to dive a little deeper and take a look at the actual text of the propose regulations. The details are on page 53, Article 18 – Right to data portability
As quoted the section reads:

1. The data subject shall have the right, where personal data are processed by electronic
means and in a structured and commonly used format, to obtain from the controller a
copy of data undergoing processing in an electronic and structured format which is
commonly used and allows for further use by the data subject.

2. Where the data subject has provided the personal data and the processing is based on
consent or on a contract, the data subject shall have the right to transmit those
personal data and any other information provided by the data subject and retained by
an automated processing system, into another one, in an electronic format which is
commonly used, without hindrance from the controller from whom the personal data
are withdrawn.

3. The Commission may specify the electronic format referred to in paragraph 1 and the
technical standards, modalities and procedures for the transmission of personal data
pursuant to paragraph 2. Those implementing acts shall be adopted in accordance
with the examination procedure referred to in Article 87(2).

Above text quoted from the regulations of the European Commission proposal.

Item 3 states that the EU Commission may specify the formats, standards and procedures for data portability. And further, as stated elsewhere in the proposal, any website that broadcasted the content of an EU citizen outside of the EU would have to follow the rules or else face huge penalties. Is the EU now going to be dictating data portability standards to the rest of the world? I doubt it.

US companies, the U.S. chamber of Commerce, and U.S. Commerce Department are lobbying the EU hard regarding these new proposals. It is hard to imagine that Europe will develop and implement these portability standards on its own, and force the rest of the world to go along with them. My guess, is that American companies will lobby for less strict, more open market solutions for data portability. Even thought the EU has a huge economy, US companies still dominate the internet and probably will for a long time.

In the end, creating data portability standards would be a great thing for internet users. It seems like a logical next step to all the cross website sharing that is now going on. So, the question is, if the European Union and American interests sit down to negotiate data portability standards, what will they look like?

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The Three Main Areas of a Successful Deep Content Website

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The core idea of Deep Content Web is to create websites with superb content, but presentation and curation of the content, and the practical ability to make use of that content are just as important. What good is fabulous content if it is difficult to find and hard to use? I will introduce these subjects today and in future posts go into them in greater detail.

The following three areas, when effectively applied together on a website, make up a satisfying Deep Content Experience.

1) Creating and Collecting Quality Content.
Figuring out where you will get your content, Picture of Pen & Quilland then keeping the quality as high as possible is the basic challenge in building an interesting website. Many questions come up around this issue.

Where is the source of the content going to come from? Will it be created in-house, by a group of specialists, by your users, or be aggregated from around the web? Or maybe a combination of these. As far as quality, how diverse and detailed should the content be for your website? How high does the standard of quality need to be? What will be the recipe of content creation that will work best for your website?

Rotten Tomatoes and the Huffington Post are interesting examples of sites that use a combination of content sources.

2) Presenting and Curating Content.
Delivering content in a clear, efficient, and Art Galleryuseful manner is crucial to keeping your customers satisfied. From the look of websites across the internet it seems that this may be the most challenging of the three areas.

Here, organization of the content, the layering and design of the site, and an optimized search system all come into play. Can your users easily find what they are looking for? Is the information presented in a straightforward manner? Is the site easy to navigate?

Curation of content should be taken very seriously, especially if the content is user-created. How do you keep the good stuff at the top of the pile and the junk at the bottom? Should the content be rated? Continuous contact with users and the employment of behavior metrics will help you stay in touch with the needs of those who use your site.

Wikipedia’s challenges with content curation are interesting to read about.

3) Supplying the tools to collect, move, organize, and send content.
In order for users to have the most enrichingBoy pushing wheelbarrow experience possible when using your website, they must be able to take the content and use it how they want. They will either use the content within the confines of your site, or take it to share and bring into their lives. They need to have the right tools to do both and you need to give them those tools.

These tools help people to collect, move, organize, and send content however they want. Sophisticated tech users are already using third-party tools to accomplish this, but this process is still beyond the average person. Some websites have recently started to address this thorny problem, but there is a long way to go. If you want to ensure that people can fully use the glorious content on your website, you have to put these tools into their hands and make them easy to use.

Evernote is a site that is addressing this problem, but sorting out all of their various tools and putting it all together can still be daunting.

These are the three main areas of a successful Deep Content Website.

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