Determinants in the on-line distribution of digital content: an exploratory analysis

This article shows the phases – and discusses the results – of an empirical analysis addressing the legal business models that are adopted online to distribute digital content

Spirit of Writing and Sharing as Motives of Kompasiana Users

In this digital era, people can more easily access information. Not only that, they also more easily produce content that can be published through various platforms on the internet. This phenomenon is called user generated content (UGC). Kompasiana, the UGC platform managed by KompasGramedia Group media company since 2008, provides space for the public to write citizen news and opinions. This platform has more than 355 thousand users and publishes an average of 373 articles per day. This study aims to determine the motivation of Kompasiana users to upload content. The motive indicator used is the typology used in Martha Jacks research, namely personal gain, individual growth, societal interaction, information dispersal, and collective change[1]. The findings of this study indicate that the highest motive is personal gain, while the lowest motive is collective change. Self-actualization and sharing are predicted to be the main drivers of Kompasiana users in creating and uploading content. The results of the cross tabulation also show that users who upload the most are users who works

Content and Feedback Analysis of YouTube Videos: Football Clubs and Fans as Brand Communities

The use of Web 2.0 tools has been transforming the interaction between companies and their clients, especially for those that are selling emotional products. Consumers are generating and sharing contents concerning their favourite products on the web. Even if this process has been widely acknowledged, only a few studies have been specifically devoted to the analysis of both the contents and the feedback the consumers receive from other users. This article analyzes the online presence of sport brands through contents that are generated by sport clubs (official contents) and their fans (User Generated Content, UGC) on YouTube. After a description and classification of video contents, it examines the factors that influence the performance of the videos in terms of passive (videos views) and active behaviour (any kinds of interaction with videos) among the viewers. In order to carry out this analysis, 125 YouTube channels were considered thereby accounting for a total of 375 videos. Results show that official contents are those preferred by the users/consumers and that if the video displays a passive/purely informative content, the chance of getting an active behaviour from the users tends to decrease. These findings may help companies manage their online presence, creating awareness about contents and information that should be spread and shared on the web

Show Your Face! Investigating the Relationship Between Human Faces and Music’s Success

Streaming services are becoming the primary source for media consumption. Particularly platforms like SoundCloud, where users can disseminate user-generated content (UGC), are gaining relevance. To shed light into the drivers which positively influence the number of listeners, we draw from marketing literature related to depictions of people, which suggests that human faces can contribute to a higher degree of brand liking or brand identification. Thereupon, we propose a hypothesis which suggests that human faces on cover arts likewise generate more plays. We follow a data science approach using 1754 observations from SoundCloud and apply Google’s facial recognition API (Vision AI) to examine the impact of human faces on music’s success. We provide initial evidence that tracks with a human-face cover art yield in a higher number of plays compared to tracks with a cover art without a human face

The Effect of Virtual Team Characteristics in Co-creation on the Quality of UGC Videos

Co-creation is a newly emerging video production method on the UGC video platform. Based on the transactive memory systems and social capital theory, this paper describes the characteristics of the virtual team formed in the co-creation, and further explores the influence of virtual team characteristics and member characteristics on video quality. This paper collects 49,785 Bilibili co-creation video data, and uses natural language processing methods and quantitative analysis methods to carry out empirical research. The study found that the specialization of virtual teams has an inverted U-shaped impact on video quality, while coordination has a positive impact and credibility has a negative impact. Additionally, the trendiness and fame of team members can enhance the inverted U-shaped impact of specialization, and fame also enhance the impact of coordination. The research results provide theoretical support for creators and managers to optimize the co-creation mode on UGC platforms

Characterizing Popularity Dynamics of User-generated Videos: A Category-based Study of YouTube

Understanding the growth pattern of content popularity has become a subject of immense interest to Internet service providers, content makers and on-line advertisers. This understanding is also important for the sustainable development of content distribution systems. As an approach to comprehend the characteristics of this growth pattern, a significant amount of research has been done in analyzing the popularity growth patterns of YouTube videos. Unfortunately, no work has been done that intensively investigates the popularity patterns of YouTube videos based on video object category. In this thesis, an in-depth analysis of the popularity pattern of YouTube videos is performed, considering the categories of videos. Metadata and request patterns were collected by employing category-specific YouTube crawlers. The request patterns were observed for a period of five months. Results confirm that the time varying popularity of di fferent YouTube categories are conspicuously diff erent, in spite of having sets of categories with very similar viewing patterns. In particular, News and Sports exhibit similar growth curves, as do Music and Film. While for some categories views at early ages can be used to predict future popularity, for some others predicting future popularity is a challenging task and require more sophisticated techniques, e.g., time-series clustering. The outcomes of these analyses are instrumental towards designing a reliable workload generator, which can be further used to evaluate diff erent caching policies for YouTube and similar sites. In this thesis, workload generators for four of the YouTube categories are developed. Performance of these workload generators suggest that a complete category-specific workload generator can be developed using time-series clustering. Patterns of users' interaction with YouTube videos are also analyzed from a dataset collected in a local network. This shows the possible ways of improving the performance of Peer-to-Peer video distribution technique along with a new video recommendation method

Exploring individuals perception of non-sponsored branded user generated content, the affect on its use and the outcome of digital engagement on Instagram

With the rise of social media importance came the rise of the user and its role in the market. Users become actors, advisors, critiques, advocates and they reveal their nonsponsored branded voice. This study proposes an examination of the User Generated Content (UGC) and its influence on the social media platform Instagram. Regarding the existent literature, this research suggests a connection between three dimensions, value, use and digital engagement on social media platform, Instagram. More specifically, the proposed model established that depending on the value each individual attributes to non-sponsored branded UGC, it will lead to different types of usages. These types of use will then lead to two possible digital outcomes on Instagram. Using the data gathered from the 402 responses, the model was tested using PLS-SEM and conclusions were drawn. All the hypothesis tested were validated and results confirmed that there is a positive connection between all thee dimensions, UGC value, UGC use and digital engagement. Consequently, results also indicated that the most significant relationship is between the social value of non-sponsored branded UGC and UGC contribution, followed by the functional value of non-sponsored branded UGC and UGC consumption. In the end of the research, the meaning of the findings and the future possible research were deliberated.Com a ascensão da importância das redes sociais veio o crescimento do utilizador e do seu papel no mercado. Os utilizadores tornam-se atores, conselheiros, críticos, defensores e revelam a sua verdadeira voz. Este estudo propõe examinar o papel do user generated content (UGC) e a sua influência na rede social, Instagram. Com base na literatura existente, esta pesquisa propõem uma conexão entre três dimensões, o valor, o uso o do user generated content e o seu compromisso digital na rede social, Instagram. Mais especificamente, o modelo proposto estabelece que dependendo do valor que cada indivíduo atribui ao conteúdo não patrocinado gerado pelos utilizadores (UGC) levará a diferentes tipos de utilização. Estas formas de utilização de conteúdo poderão levar a dois possíveis efeitos de compromisso digital no Instagram. Usando os dados das 402 respostas obtidas, o modelo foi testado usando PLS-SEM e conclusões foram retiradas. Todas as hipóteses testadas foram validadas e os resultados confirmam a existência de uma conexão positiva entre as três dimensões, valor, uso e compromisso digital. Consequentemente os resultados revelam, também, que as relações mais significativas ocorrem entre o valor social do UGC e a contribuição para esse conteúdo, seguido pelo o valor funcional do UGC e o subsequente consumo desse conteúdo. No final da pesquisa, é proposta uma justificação para os resultados alcançados e são deliberadas as possíveis futuras investigações neste assunto

An Empirical Analysis of User Content Generation and Usage Behavior in Mobile Digital Media

Different kinds of user-generated content are becoming available in mobile digital and web media settings as well spurred by the rapid advances in the cellular telephony market. We use a unique dataset of individual-level mobile records to study the nature of interdependencies between users’ content generation and content usage behavior. While theories of resource constraints from economics posit the existence of a negative interdependency between content generation and usage, theories of social exchange from sociology posit the existence of a positive interdependency between these two activities. Hence, the final directional nature of this interdependency is an empirical question. We find that there exist negative inter-temporal interdependencies between the content generation and usage behavior. The effect is also asymmetric such that the negative impact of previous period’s content generation on current period’s content usage is higher than vice-versa. Managerial implications for discounting in data transmission prices are discussed

Measurements and analysis of a major adult video portal

Today the Internet is a large multimedia delivery infrastructure, with websites such as YouTube appearing at the top of most measurement studies. However, most traffic studies have ignored an important domain: adult multimedia distribution. Whereas, traditionally, such services were provided primarily via bespoke websites, recently these have converged towards what is known as "Porn 2.0". These services allow users to upload, view, rate and comment on videos for free (much like YouTube). Despite their scale, we still lack even a basic understanding of their operation This paper addresses this gap by performing a large-scale study of one of the most popular Porn 2.0 websites: YouPorn. Our measurements reveal a global delivery infrastructure that we have repeatedly crawled to collect statistics (on 183k videos). We use this data to characterise the corpus, as well as to inspect popularity trends and and how they relate to other features, e.g., categories and ratings. To explore our discoveries further, we use a small-scale user study, highlighting key system implications

Mobilizing User-Generated Content For Canada’s Digital Advantage

Executive Summary: The goal of the Mobilizing User-Generated Content for Canada’s Digital Content Advantage project is to define User-Generated Content (UGC) in its current state, identify successful models built for UGC, and anticipate barriers and policy infrastructure needed to sustain a model to leverage the further development of UGC to Canada\u27s advantage. At the outset, we divided our research into three domains: creative content, small scale tools and collaborative user-generated content. User-generated creative content is becoming increasingly evident throughout the technological ecology through online platforms and online social networks where individuals develop, create and capture information and choose to distribute content through an online platform in a transformative manner. The Internet offers many tools and resources that simplify the various UGC processes and models. Social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr and others provide functionality to upload content directly into the site itself, eliminating the need for formatting and conversion, and allowing almost instantaneous access to the content by the user’s social network. The successful sites have been able to integrate content creation, aggregation, distribution, and consumption into a single tool, further eroding some of the traditional dichotomies between content creators and end-users. Along with these larger scale resources, this study also treats small scale tools, which are tools, modifications, and applications that have been created by a user or group of users. There are three main categories of small scale tools. The first is game modifications, or add-ons, which are created by users/players in order to modify the game or assist in its play. The second is modifications, objects, or tools created for virtual worlds such as Second Life. Third, users create applications and tools for mobile devices, such as the iPhone or the Android system. The third domain considers UGC which is generated collaboratively. This category is comprised of wikis, open source software and creative content authored by a group rather than a sole individual. Several highly successful examples of collaborative UGC include Wikipedia, and open source projects such as the Linux operating system, Mozilla Firefox and the Apache platform. Major barriers to the production, distribution and aggregation of collaborative UGC are unduly restrictive intellectual property rights (including copyrights, licensing requirements and technological protection mechanisms). There are several crucial infrastructure and policies required to facilitate collaborative UGC. For example, in the area of copyright policy, a careful balance is needed to provide appropriate protection while still allowing downstream UGC creation. Other policy considerations include issues pertaining to technological protection mechanisms, privacy rights, consumer protection and competition. In terms of infrastructure, broadband internet access is the primary technological infrastructure required to promote collaborative UGC creation. There has recently been a proliferation of literature pertaining to all three of these domains, which are reviewed. Assessments are made about the most effective models and practices for each domain, as well as the barriers which impede further developments. This initial research is used as a basis for generating some tentative conclusions and recommendations for further research about the policy and technological infrastructures required to best mobilize and leverage user-generated content to create additional value in the digital economy internal and external to Canada. Policy recommendations based on this research focus on two principles: balancing the interest of both content owners and users, and creating an enabling environment in which UGC production, distribution, aggregation, and re-use can flourish