subject: Why Social Media Visitors Can't Cope And Simply Leave Content Creation To The Experts [print this page] It appears that creativity is beyond the ability of the majority of social media users, who just look, listen and download, rather than contributing to the information available online. Social media users are wallflowers when it comes to content creation. It appears that they are just not able to understand its intricacies and even though the amount of interest in the Internet has grown substantially, the number of people who actually contribute is starting to shrink.
Content creation, it appears, is beyond the capability of most people. Well known online researcher Forrester conducted a comprehensive survey throughout the Asia-Pacific region, North America and Europe. The findings concluded that while interest in social media and the Internet is moving forward at a considerable pace, the number of people who are engaging in content creation has actually started to shrink.
This may come as no surprise to some people with knowledge of how the social media phenomenon actually plays out. Indeed it is estimated that only 10% of those who engage on Twitter are also involved in content creation. Fully 90% of Twitter members are passive, or actually lose interest and fade away after a short period of engagement.
These are interesting statistics, especially when you consider that the Internet is essentially based on information and content creation is its lifeblood. Without focused, updated and fresh information, the Internet would be a very static medium. We can conclude that the majority of people who register and interact with social media sites are fully content to leave content creation to the experts and merely want to access this information.
Is content creation simply too difficult a proposition for the majority? Does this picture of stagnation represent an ominous sign for the future of social media and the Internet in general? Indeed, content creation requires a certain mindset and ability and a predisposition to provide focused, specific content. Most people fall outside of this spectrum. This is not really a surprise, though, as the majority of information has always been provided by the minority of content creation experts.
Consider the growth in the number of blogs online over the past few years. There appears to be a trend toward the creation of a "little piece of cyberspace" and online real estate. Blogging platforms such as WordPress have added to the emergence of a number of intuitive tools to make the creation of a blog a lot easier than it used to be. However, most still seem to flounder when it comes to the actual content creation itself, regularly.
Facebook has given a whole new meaning to the term blogging, as individual profile pages are essentially miniature blogs by themselves. We can, after all, find out everything we need to know about personal life, projects, hobbies and small-business ventures therein. Forrester tells us, though, that we should not expect to see particularly high standards of creativity here....
The true worth of content creation is measured by the value it delivers. Any information delivered via the Internet has to be educational, informative, entertaining or interesting in one way or another. For many, it seems that this kind of content creation activity is beyond the realm.
