Although this site is dedicated to covering developments impacting the mobile industry, a few emerging trends in the online space merit closer examination. One is a new survey – released this week by media consultancy, Conchango and trends predictor, The Future Laboratory. (Details in this post from eConsultancy.) It reveals that user-generated content (UGC) might not be the crowd-pleaser Web destinations and popular media would like to have us think it is.

In fact, the survey of 1,000 U.K. consumers shows “users are turning back to the experts due to the surge of untrustworthy user-generated content (UGC) flooding the web.” While one in five people now contribute to, or create their own content (in the form of a blog of forum postings, for example), most respondents do not trust the content created by their peers. (When asked which sources of information they trusted, less than one percent cited UGC sources.)

The research found that 62 percent of respondents use the Internet to access information. What’s more, they gravitate to established publishers and media brands to get the news they need. As Mike Altendorf, Cochango CEO points out: “User-generated content has dominated the discussion of media in recent times. While we are seeing a backlash, there is still a place for it in moderation. It is important for media owners and brands to establish how they will keep viewers and readers involved without compromising their own reputations. UGC has its place in the form of feedback and dedicated forums, however users want to be sure that their ‘news’ is coming from someone that has done their due-diligence and knows their topic.”

Read between the lines and it’s clear business media online and – ultimately – via mobile will rise to take a top-notch spot in the content mix. (Another reason why I believe Paidcontent.org has hit the mark with its upcoming conference, The Future Of Business Media.) The takeaway: Be discerning and don’t get carried away with user-gen hype. Expert-gen content is gaining traction in online and is well-positioned to repeat this success in the mobile space.

But it’s not just content created by “experts.” The same can go for content that has gained our trust and respect. Against this backdrop, expect to see at least one major search engine provider pick up on this trend big-time and empower individuals to rate and rank content, and create mobile communities of expertise. Not be outdone some companies are sharpening their focus on recommendation engines, a technology they can tweak to deliver more and similar trusted content to users who have expressed an implicit or explicit interest in it. (This motivation is at the heart of FAST’s decision to acquire AgentArts, a provider of recommendation and personalization technologies.) I’ll have more on the pivotal role of recommenders in upcoming interviews as well as exclusive coverage in preparation for RecSys ‘07, a scientific conference and workshop organized by the University of Minnesota Digital Technology Center.

          

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 10th, 2007 at 8:17 pm and is filed under Mobile Content, Mobile Search, Recommendation, Web 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.