Lemon Foundation

With the growth in popularity in social media tools and user generated content, as evidenced by the growth of YouTube, MySpace and of blogging in general, many newspapers have attempted to incorporate social media tools into their websites to increase their popularity.

In the UK, The Guardian, The Sun, and the Daily Mail, have all adopted user-generated content to varying degrees. The Guardian mainly limits comments to its leaders, comment, and blogs, while The Daily Mail has been the most pioneering, allowing readers to comment on homepage stories.

UGC gives people more reasons to return to a website. It makes for a stickier experience. People want to interact, to participate, to share their own views. Perhaps, by stopping short of fully embracing user generated content, The New York Times has missed a trick here?

There is a business case for embracing user-generated content. Here are five good reasons for starters:

• Increased loyalty
• Increased page views
• Increased frequency of visits
• Increased session time
• Increased word of mouth

Recently, The Telegraph has taken user-generated content one step further, with the addition of its MyTelegraph section.

While other newspapers have blogs, or allow users to comment, MyTelegraph allows users to create their own blogs, profiles, write their own blog posts, and personalise their blog pages.

It's an interesting move, and the first of its kind by a UK newspaper. It has been successful so far – just two days from its launch, MyTelegraph had a thousand registrations, 500 bloggers, 800 blog posts and more than 2,500 comments.

This week, the newspaper has taken this a step further and created an RSS reader, MyNews, for MyTelegraph’s users, which lets users see a range of news sources, including the BBC, Reuters and the Guardian, without having to leave the site.

Recent Hitwise figures suggest that these tactics are working - the share of UK internet visits to news and media sites are up 19% year on year as of April 2007. Print media sites are keeping pace, with visits up 17% year on year.