Ok, I confess, the title is disingenuous. Everyone knows no single entity dominates, much less creates, the web. But if anyone was still in doubt on that point, the latest Pew Internet study should finally put the issue to rest.
According to Wendy Davis’ story on Online Media Daily:
“As of last December, 35 percent of Americans had posted to a blog, created a Web page, shared online photos, or otherwise generated content. That proportion is more than double the 16 percent that had posted any content to the Web in January 2002, when Pew first researched the topic.”
That translates to 48 million Americans, according to ClickZ’ Enid Burns.
Not only are the base numbers increasing, but the demographic spread is widening. It isn’t just young, techno-savvy web geeks anymore, it’s everybody.
That shouldn’t be too surprising, considering the growth of social networks over the past few years. MSN Spaces, for example, now has more than 100 million unique visitors, according to comScore Media Matrix data.
And, says Hitwise, MySpace.com now constitutes 8.7% of Google’s traffic, the largest single source. (Hardly any wonder, then, that the two companies are rumored to be in talks on some kind of deal.)
It’s anybody’s guess — because I sure don’t have a good one — what happens after everyone is talking and showing everything to everyone in every way. But there’s no need to guess about one likely result: More dollars for affiliate marketers who cash in on the trend toward non-traditional advertising.
So the answer to the question of the title, at least in part, would be: you do.