Creators vs. Distributors vs. Consumers
- Andrew Kinnear
- Dec 15, 2009
- 2 min read
Content on the web can be anything from the most useful, business-related document or analysis or data-set, to the most ridiculous wastes of time like kittens on a pizza. At the end of the day however, there are only 3 groups that interact with this content. (Feel free to argue with me about this...) As the title of the post would suggest, there are those that make content, those that distribute/disseminate/share/rate/up-vote/retweet/re-post/link-back etc, (which I'll call the distributors) and those that simply consume (watch, read, listen). These groups are not mutually exclusive, but they can be very different. Since we all have mobile phones in our pockets these days, technically we could all be called creators. It doesn't take much to be in the right place at the right time, snap a photo with a smart phone, and tweet,post, or share it. These are content creators in the literal sense, and most of the time they don't see themselves as such. They think "Hey, this is a punny sign, I'm going to share it with my friends". There usually isn't a conscious effort about creating content, and a lot of times people don't realize that their tweets are indexed by Google or that (if their Facebook profile isn't completely locked down with privacy settings) their photos and status updates are also considered web content for others to read and view and share. We are all essentially creators of content, whether formally-- I am a blogger, or informally--- I snapped this picture. Consumers are Distributors (those that read/view/listen/watch) that don't distribute. There is always someone at the end of the chain of content who says "I've seen this before" or "this is funny, but not funny enough for me to add my personal credibility to and share with my network(s)". Where do you fit? Are you primarily a creator, a consumer, or a distributor of content? Most of us span all of these categories, which is why I decided against trying to make any pretty Venn diagrams or anything. This is not scientific. Comments?
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