Click

Click was written by Bill Tancer, the general manager of Global Research at Hitwise, an online competitive intelligence company. In Click, Tancer describes how tracking trends in online search terms can provide useful data about what people are thinking, what they value and what they fear.

Tancer begins by noting that the most popular search terms and web sites tend to be associated with "Porn, Pills or Casinos (PPC)." One interesting trend, however, is that as the popularity of Social Networking sites has increased, the interest in adult web sites has decreased. This demonstrates the high interest in social networking and its potential power.

Tancer challenges some of the basic assumptions regarding Web 2.0 including the belief that many of the visitors to these sites are contributors of content, rather than simply consumers. In fact, Tancer provides evidence that only a very small percentage of visitors to sites such as YouTube (0.16%) or Flickr (0.18%)actually upload content. The demographics for contributors for these two sites tend to be young and, in the case of YouTube, tend to be male. Wikipedia has a larger contributor rate of 3.5% with contributors being much older on average. While Wikipedia is popular with a younger demographic, the younger visitors tend to be consumers rather than contributors. Tancer applies the 1/9/90 rule to Web 2.0 sites, where 1% of the visitors represent regular contributors, 9% represent occasional or one time contributors and 90% are simply consumers, or "lurkers."

Tancer concludes his book with a discussion of how innovation and disruptive change occurs in online services. He references the work of Everett Rogers, who coined the phrase, "diffusion of innovation." After conducting extensive research into the introduction and spread of innovative products (hybrid corn seed), Rogers noted that the level of acceptance occurred on a bell curve. He identified five distinct groups including: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards. He noted that the key to rapid diffusion lay in the hands of the early adopters.

Tancer used the rapid rise and dominance of YouTube to illustrate this phenomenon. Tancer noted that YouTube actually entered at a time when there were many video sites. Yet, it vaulted from "obscurity to ubiquity" in a span of just 35 days. This was largely due to early adopters sending links and recommendations to friends.

While this book focused largely on marketing and marketing research, it does have implications for education. I found the discussion on contributors to Web 2.0 sites to be interesting and relevant. I also thought that the chapter on innovation diffusion held some valuable insights.

As I finished the book, I came upon an article/blog discussing how Jimmy Wales cites research that supports that most of the contributions to Wikipedia are made by approximately 1,400 people. The author took exception to that and cited research that he had done that actually showed that, while a small group of "insiders" make most of the edit, they are generally changes to format. The actual content, however, has been been contributed by a much larger group that tends to make small and very focused contributions.

If you would like to examine search term trends, visit: www.google.com/trends. It is very interesting.

For a more detailed summary of Click, visit the online ERDTS Shared Research Database.