The Overjustification Effect and User Generated Content
Note from the editor: These next few days, we will be re-publishing note-worthy content from the Wisdump archive. This particular article was originally posted by Paul Scrivens on November 8th, 2006.
First it is pertinent to know Wikipedia’s definition of the Overjustification Effect.
The overjustification effect (also called the undermining effect) is the effect whereby giving someone an incentive (monetary or otherwise) to do something that they already enjoy doing decreases their intrinsic motivation to do it. As a result of the extrinsic incentive, the person views his or her actions as externally controlled rather than intrinsically appealing. According to Self-perception theory, people undergo overjustification effect because by observing what they do and why they did it, the extrinsic motivation appears to be the main cause and so undermines their intrinsic motivation.
And no, the irony of using Wikipedia, a user-generated content site, for a definition to a term has not escaped me.
The issue of rewarding users for helping your site grow and producing content is a very interesting one. Digg is one of the fastest growing sites this year due to the amount of content people are putting on it. More content = more pageviews = more money. Kevin Rose gets a profile of himself done on BusinessWeek and is labeled as the “$60M Kid” because of the work of a couple hundred thousand people that he doesn’t even know. Do they deserve a piece of the pie when Digg gets bought?
How do Reddit users feel about their work being scooped up by Conde Nast? Netscape has offered to pay its top users and while that works for some it doesn’t work for all. If Digg took the same approach it would more than likely fail because the value of the site that users receive has been replaced with rewards.
9rules doesn’t offer its members money for the content they produce or false promises of thousands of new pageviews a day for getting on our frontpage. We know very well the benefits of joining 9rules and do not try to offer anymore incentives than reaching a larger audience than before. You might get 10 new readers or you might get 10,000, but you also get to join a private community where you can build relationships that might not have been possible otherwise. Many people take their admission to the Network as a sign of the great work they have done over the past months and years.
Squidoo moved too soon by sharing its revenue with members because there really was no other incentive to write on the site versus creating your own blog. It doesn’t hide the fact that some people will try to get a quick buck, but communities will never be based around such things. We all know that passion drives any community and if you are a community leader you must be careful of the incentives you offer people.
Many times you can’t even predict the incentives that people will find in your site, you just have to hope that you are providing the right platform for them to find them. It has been argued that to dethrone YouTube you simply have to offer a revenue sharing scheme, but how often do you hear about anyone even coming close to offering what YouTube does in intrinsic value? You have a huge community that fights, bickers, acts immature and is downright rude to each other, but continues to grow and come back. Sounds just like Digg to me.
For 9rules Notes, there isn’t much value to our Users beyond joining a mature community where you can join in on some great discussions, but how often are people looking for more than that? To some that’s all the value you need so by me saying “isn’t much” I am greatly downplaying the values of many of our Notes Users. I am the Top Notes User not because I help run the company, but because I get great satisfaction out of hearing what others think. That’s what makes blogging such a wonderful process and why many of the top blogs are independently run. When the money follows the intrinsic rewards it is so much sweeter than having the money try to push you towards intrinsic satisfaction.
Looking at Digg and their recent changes you can see a split in opinion of whether the recent algorithm changes are a good or bad thing. The real issue you have to look at is whether the changes not only make the site better, but also increase the intrinsic value of Digg’s users. Many people post on Digg not to get traffic to their sites, but because they want to be a top Digg user because of the feeling of power they receive from it. That is their intrinsic value and sure it is selfish, but that is what intrinsic values are based around.
Start to offer them monetary rewards and they start to question whether they are posting for the intrinsic value or the reward and this is when they start to lose interest. Blogging is scary to Mainstream Media not only because it can be done quicker (and sometimes with little regard to fact-checking), but also provides more value from doing something for free versus getting paid for it. The trick is to give your users something that they value more than money. Good luck.
Nowadays web designing is no more a game of art. In this competing age, only professional web designers can survive as many cheap web designing facilities available. Though many easy to use scripts like Java scripts have been designed by the webmasters but still for making dynamic websites, webmasters must have good grip on flash and Java. Still some webmasters are using visual basic for designing but it needs to have the knowledge of other languages as well for good designing. No doubt HTML is the basic language for all designers but for making web pages with content management systems, normally webmasters prefer ASP.Net for their designing.
“The trick is to give your users something that they value more than money. Good luck.”
But on the odd end of the scale, you have the people who (incorrectly) value small amounts of money as the only motivation they need. For example with Squidoo, the highest earners supposedly don’t make more than $100 per month which for normal people would not be enough to justify the hours spent updating Lenses, but for some people (the people who have spent the most amount of time at Squidoo) it’s worth it to them. I don’t know why they feel it worth their time (either they intrinsically like Squidoo enough to not care about the money, or they don’t value their work enough, or their work just isn’t high enough quality to be worth more money) but regardless a small percentage of these low-margin site users have no problem writing content.
With sites like these that provide little value outside of the monetary aspect, it seems they only attract people who are content with making low amounts of money which either means they’re worth small amounts of money or they’re stupid, which is the type of people who write for other sites for these micropayments.
By Mike Rundle on November 8, 2006 5:19 am
Is there no finanical benefit to joining 9rules? I thought you shared ad revenue or something? How do you make money?
By Brent on November 8, 2006 5:25 am
Overjustification is absolute nonsense.
The only thing the user is concerned about is a net benefit.
If an average user can make $3000 a month doing something
that he enjoys, he will not like the site any less.
digg.com works because people receive traffic for posting.
wikipedia works because it is the only source for well structured historical information and it ranks high in google.
By Daniel on November 8, 2006 7:28 am
“How do Reddit users feel about their work being Netscape has offered to pay its top users”
Looks like a broken sentence there, Scrivs.
Nice article though. I think that it’s great that a person could make money by writing a blog for a living. But I also think that these very same people get illusions about the type of money that they will make or the amount of work that you have to put in to make that money.
By Frank 'viperteq' Young on November 8, 2006 9:37 am
right on point. it kills me each and every day to build sites for our clients who insist on polluting their site with ads right away to help offset cost. we try to pound it into their heads that “content is king, the cash comes later”… but they just don’t get it. building a valuable community is not easy, but it starts with the right combination of intrinsic value and quality content.
By T on November 8, 2006 10:43 am
[...] Super tekst, iskopan na cssdrive-u, kojeg je napisao Scrivs. The Overjustification Effect and User Generated Content. Kaže li(n)k: The issue of rewarding users for helping your site grow and producing content is a very interesting one [...]
By i-scream.net » Blog Archive » User Expirience ++ on November 8, 2006 12:04 pm
As you mention, there are more rewards than monetary rewards. And there are different hurdles that people feel comfortable surmounting.
(Surmounting? What the… Jumping. I meant jumping. Sorry, I haven’t had enough coffee, yet.)
It’s like any company: some offer monetary reward, some offer something deeper. And they use one to trade for the other.
Let’s look at your examples:
* Social news networks (ala Digg) members excel in research and contribution. The filter is the public. Contributing enough interesting content results in reward. The reward is the “fame” of being a top contributor. Now, that reward may also be monetary. Barrier to entry? Low. Barrier to success? High.
* 9rules members excel in design, content, and focus. The filter is the private selection process. Meeting the requirements of the 9rules judicial body results in reward. The reward is the fame of being individually recognized for an association with an exclusive and trusted group of contributors. Barrier to entry? High. Barrier to success? Still pretty high.
* Squidoo members purport to be experts on a given topic. The filter to participate is neither selective nor especially difficult. Finding the impetus to build the site is the filter. The reward is the perceived association with Seth Godin and Heath Row, in addition to a few bucks. Barrier to entry? Low, if not non-existent. Barrier to success? Excruciatingly high.
Now, 9rules has the power of both exclusivity and continued expectation. Neither the social news networks nor Squidoo have this going for them. (I’m not worried about getting kicked out of Digg if I slack off for a couple of months.) So, they have to create an artifice of exclusivity (money) in hopes of retaining interest and participation.
I, being an egotistical glory hound, find the 9rules flavor of fame a great deal more appealing than the monetary, because it’s something I can’t readily achieve on my own. But that’s me. Other people have other motivation.
Oh phooey. Now I’ve gone and entered a blog post in the comments section, again. Feel free to edit.
By Rick Turoczy on November 8, 2006 12:36 pm
[...] Over at his Wisdump, Paul Scrivens of 9rules fame has a rather interesting take on the reward systems that social sites are pursuing. The post, entitled The Overjustification Effect and User Generated Content, tackles the fame versus fortune rewards of social sites. [...]
By Why do you do it? | More than a living on November 8, 2006 12:52 pm
Ah thanks for pointing that out Frank, I forgot to close the a tag so it caused the sentence to come out funky.
Daniel, I’m not sure what to say about your example since you aren’t really being specific about it. I’m definitely not saying that everyone in the world doesn’t want to make money because we all do, but if there is an alternative that can provide us both monetary reward and that sense of intrinsic satisfaction then they will go there.
Pete Rojas (man who runs Engadget) is a great example of this. Before when he ran Gizmodo you could say that he was making a decent amount of cash and gaining a large amount of respect and fame, but he still left to start Engadget over at WIN without being sure that it would make him more money or that he would still receive the recognition that he achieved with Gizmodo. Now why would he do something like this?
The reward of owning your own site and making it big is more rewarding than making a site big for someone else and I am positive that held a lot of allure to him.
You see it happen all the time in the world where an individual leaves a cushy job to pursue the unknown. No Overjustification isn’t nonsense, its a balance. Choose to ignore it at your own peril.
By Scrivs on November 8, 2006 2:54 pm
Rick: You nailed it with the three different formulas. With Digg you also can’t ignore the value of being part of a community, which many people still underestimate. With Squidoo you dont get a sense of community at all. You are stuck in a building with a lot of rooms, but you only get to stay in your room and never see anyone else.
An interesting question is, if 9rules took away the filter of exclusivity (choice by just 3 people), could it be replaced by another filter of many deciding what sites deserve to be in a Network. I think it can and don’t be surprised if this is something we look to integrate in the future.
By Scrivs on November 8, 2006 2:58 pm
Mike: I don’t necessarily think that the odd end of the scale values money incorrectly, its just that they might not get the intrinsic rewards and satisfaction of doing something on their own and therefore just doing it for the paycheck makes sense to them.
Scoble was able to do blog and receive a paycheck, but you could tell that he found greater reward from being an advocate and trying to make a difference and it showed. But then he moved on to PodTech, why? Probably because there was a chance to do something even greater for himself and there is the intrinsic rewards coming into play again.
By Scrivs on November 8, 2006 3:02 pm
Scrivs: I’m not sure I want the triumvirate to abdicate the responsibility of choosing to the public. No wait, that’s wrong. I’m absolutely sure that I don’t want that.
I trust 9rules because I know who picked the sites and (basically) how they were picked.
Is that a something that can support the continuing growth of the network? No, not likely. Is it a ton of work for the three of you? Yes.
That said, I MIGHT trust the 9rules team to ascribe a similar review process to expanding its reviewing team, forming a larger group to help make the decisions on the sites. But I’m still not sure.
The value of the 9rules community lies in the exclusivity. I don’t think 9rules is 9rules without it.
By Rick Turoczy on November 8, 2006 5:45 pm
Rick, if we ever did expand the selection process it wouldn’t be something where everyone and their mom can game the system to get into 9rules. But as the last round indicated (1190 sites submitted) doing this over and over with 3 people simply won’t work. Our brand lies in our exclusivity and it would be silly to throw that away just to grow a little bit bigger.
By Scrivs on November 8, 2006 6:03 pm
Scrivs, Maybe I can open up my “circle of trust” for more than you three. Maybe. ;)
By Rick Turoczy on November 8, 2006 8:09 pm
I’m sure you will be the first to know if it works or not. But its us, so of course it will work :).
By Scrivs on November 9, 2006 6:27 am
[...] The real concern here is when you try to prevent individuals from “gaming” your system are you really helping or hurting your site. In the case of Digg you could argue your case either way. It’s easy to see how a small group (top 100) have heavy influence over whether a link makes it on the homepage or not, but does that deter quality content from making it? They had to become top 100 users one way or another because it just doesn’t magically happen. If you try to take away the “power” that they worked so hard to achieve you are more than likely going to upset them and quite possibly get them to leave (make sure to checkout The Overjustification Effect and User Generated Content). [...]
By The Democracy of System Gaming » Wisdump on November 10, 2006 1:17 am
Wow, this reminds me of something I wrote about Reddit a while back. Give it a go: I guess social bookmarking is just beyond me.
By Montoya on November 17, 2006 4:30 am
[...] Blog Networks have a problem. Do you go for that one hit site or do you go for the niche categories and fill out the long tail? At the beginning it looked as though Weblogs, Inc. was going to fill out the long tail, but as writers come and go (many times because of the Overjustification Effect) the smaller sites were left to wither and die, while the more mainstream sites caught on and grew. Leading the charge was Engadget and due to its success it was able to start moving into the long tail of technology with with Engadget HD and Engadget Mobile. [...]
By The Pareto Principle and Blog Networks » Wisdump on December 19, 2006 12:36 pm
I didn’t know there was a name for the reason that if I go buy a book in the store I’ll post a review, but if O’Reilly gives me some swag it gathers dust. :)
By engtech on December 19, 2006 9:21 pm
[...] want you to check out their project or site and write about it. This often creates something like the over justification effect where if I had discovered it myself I might have written about it, but because someone is asking me [...]
By National Engineering Week « Internet Duct Tape on July 19, 2007 10:31 pm