Quantitative Analysis of User-Generated Content

on the Web

Xavier Ochoa, ESPOL, EcuadorErik Duval, KULeuven, Bélgica

TopicsWhy?StudiesFindings

Implication of the Findings

ConclusionFurterWork

Why?

• UGC economy:– Supply: Users publishing their content

–Demand: Users viewing content from others

–Currency: Attention

Why?

• Demand (Popularity) is relatively well understood:

• But Supply (Publication) is not....

How a ‘hit’ is born (S Sinha, RK Pan, 2006)

Studies

Studies

1. Descriptive Statistics

2. Distribution Fitting

3. Concentration Analysis

Findings

• Distribution of supply is not Normal

Findings

• Distribution of supply has a heavy tail

Findings

Lotka (“fat-tail”) Weibull (“fat-belly”)

Implications of the Findings

There is not such thing as an “average user”

Low Class

Middle Class

High Class

Implications of the Findings

The production of different UGC types is similar, but not

the same.

Implications of the Findings

Pareto Rule (80/20) applies to UGC

(but no substitute to measuring)

Implications of the Findings

“Fat-tail” UGC production is similar to professional

production.

Implications of Findings

The distribution is not affected by site size

or production effort

Implications of the Findings

Make your bet, head or tail?

50% of Content is generated here

50% of Content is generated here

Implications of the Findings

Informetrics can help us to understand UGC production

(and vice versa)

Conclusions

• Measuring is our only way to test our hypothesis about how Web works

• If you admin a UGC-based site, measure production to gain insight on the other side of your economy

• Inequality of Contribution of UGC is real and should be dealt with in all its variations.

Further Work

• Modeling Production of UGC• Integrate UGC inside the Informetrics /

Scientometrics / Webometrics framework• Expand the data collection and analysis– Measure growth (size and contributors)– Measure production rate– Use at least 3 examples for each type of UGC

Xie xie, questions?

Xavier Ochoa – xavier@cti.espol.edu.ecErik Duval – Erik.Duval@cs.kuleuven.be