Time Person of Year, You: is good story but awefully mainstream

I promised to review the Time Cover story of this week (25 December cover issue 2006) of the Person of the Year: You. Its a very good survey of the mainstream online communities with user-generated content. So it has YouTube, Second Life, MySpace, Flickr, Wikipedia etc. And each site is covered - appropriately for the Time cover story - through one of the actual heavy users of that particular site, describing their life and interaction through that community. A clever story, well written and covers a lof of the mainstream sites and services.

I do feel that the article is too USA-focused. No mention of Bebo of Britain or Mixi of Japan - both the biggest online communities in these countries. But its not all USA, certainly. French WAT.tv and Dailymotion (French equivalents of YouTube) are mentioned, as is Ohmy News of South Korea. And for example the person featured on the MySpace story is a Vietnamese pop (and porn) star Tila Tequila; as well as the blogger featured is Chinese Wang Xiaofeng.

The more important observations about the 32 page special are first, that it is not nearly as broad a coverage as our blogsite - and likely interests of our readers. It is "only" about User-generated content, and obviously as "You" the people who "user-generate". There is much more about communities as we all know, that this story does not cover.

Secondly, more importantly, like a Time cover story, it focuses on the main story, the big picture if you will, of mostly what readers of our blogsite are very well aware of. It has the usual suspects: YouTube (four times), blogging (three times), Flickr, Facebook, podcasting, Amazon (user generated reviews, not book sales), MySpace, Wikipedia, Ohmy News, open source programming. YouTube also featured in follow-up stories, and one on Second Life. That is good for anyone not sure about the significance of digital communities (and how user-generated content is changing society).
But for our readers we'd much more appreciate how the more exceptional services, from the fringes, are shaping the future of communities. No mention of Habbo Hotel, where kids - digital natives - of today are learning to live, much more intensely addictive than Second Life, which is geared to adults, the digital immigrants. No mention of MMOGs, Massively Multiplayer Online Games, where World of Warcraft, Lineage, Counterstrike etc have tens of millions of active users - which has generated true employment in the virtual space, farmers of virtual gold, as we've reported here. And no mention of the world's most advanced digital community - and the one that combined MySpace, Flickr, Second Life, YouTube, blogging, eBay, Amazon, Facebook etc. It is obviously Cyworld of South Korea. As users on both systems say now in America after Cyworld entered the USA earlier this year: Cyworld is years ahead of MySpace. Time should have mentioned the future of this phenomenon.

Still, its a great read, kind of overview of where is user-generated content (from an American viewpoint) today, December 2006. Its come a very long way in the past few years. But also, like Alan said earlier, it is quite amazing that we covered all of these topics in our groundbreaking book Communities Dominate Brands now almost two years ago. And still today, CEOs of various companies write to us and say this is the most important business book to them today, that they literally are reorganizing their companies based on those thoughts.

I do find a thought in the Time story to be particularly illuminating and leave our readers with this thought for the weekend. Time writes, "2006... is a story about community and and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It's about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes."

Not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes. Yes, user-generated content, digital communities, Generation-C the Community Generation. But also change the way the world changes. I agree.

Comments

[Jon H]

The citizen journalist is the best hope for world peace. Bravo to TIME for recognizing the individual communiator! More at http://jon8332.typepad.com/force_for_good/2006/12/short_take_too_.html

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Hi Jon

Thanks, yes, very good point.

Tomi :-)