Epitome of Consumer Contribution
The talk in business these days is all about how to involve the consumer--the end user--in the brand. Through brand interactions, comes loyalty. Bonus for businesses: consumers want that involvement too. They want to contribute to product creation, give their opinions on product reviews, throw out advertising ideas. All of this is an effort to be heard. Consumers are desperate to find outlets where they can feel individual and important. And brands are giving them an outlet to do this (good thing, since consumers would do it anyway).The convergence of these two desires results in blogs, product reviews, and consumer contribution to content. The epitome of consumer contribution to content is the amazing Wikipedia. The NY Review of Books has a great piece summing up the success and addictive qualities of Wikipedia when contributing content for the world to read:
"More people use Wikipedia than Amazon or eBay—in fact it's up there in the top-ten Alexa rankings with those moneyed funhouses MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube. Why? Because it has 2.2 million articles, and because it's very often the first hit in a Google search, and because it just feels good to find something there—even, or especially, when the article you find is maybe a little clumsily written. Any inelegance, or typo, or relic of vandalism reminds you that this gigantic encyclopedia isn't a commercial product. There are no banners for E*Trade or Classmates.com, no side sprinklings of AdSense."
"It worked and grew because it tapped into the heretofore unmarshaled energies of the uncredentialed. The thesis procrastinators, the history buffs, the passionate fans of the alternate universes of Garth Nix, Robotech, Half-Life, P.G. Wodehouse, Battlestar Galactica, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Charles Dickens, or Ultraman—all those people who hoped that their years of collecting comics or reading novels or staring at TV screens hadn't been a waste of time—would pour the fruits of their brains into Wikipedia, because Wikipedia added up to something. This wasn't like writing reviews on Amazon, where you were just one of a million people urging a tiny opinion and a Listmania list onto the world—this was an effort to build something that made sense apart from one's own opinion, something that helped the whole human cause roll forward."
And on the thrills of the edit:
"I clicked the 'edit this page' tab, and immediately had an odd, almost lightheaded feeling, as if I had passed through the looking glass and was being allowed to fiddle with some huge engine or delicate piece of biomedical equipment. It seemed much too easy to do damage; you ask, Why don't the words resist me more? Soon, though, you get used to it. You recall the central Wikipedian directive: 'Be Bold.' You start to like life on the inside."
Providing consumers an outlet to interact with a brand and be heard can give a brand that addictive quality needed to bring consumers back again and again.Others might view Wikipedia differently, and not quite so democratic, as noted on Slate.com:
"While Wikipedia does show the creative potential of online communities, it's a mistake to assume the site owes its success to the wisdom of the online crowd."Social-media sites like Wikipedia and Digg are celebrated as shining examples of Web democracy, places built by millions of Web users who all act as writers, editors, and voters. In reality, a small number of people are running the show. According to researchers in Palo Alto, 1percent of Wikipedia users are responsible for about half of the site's edits. The site also deploys bots—supervised by a special caste of devoted users—that help standardize format, prevent vandalism, and root out folks who flood the site with obscenities. This is not the wisdom of the crowd. This is the wisdom of the chaperones."