Understanding Users

Network technology changes at a rapid pace and changing technologies constantly present new challenges and require new solutions. However, user behavior changes at a much slower pace than technology. Although technology does open new possibilities for users to express themselves, the basic human needs can be considered to remain rather constant, when compared to the speed of change of technology. In this talk, we will present results from 1 year of measurements of user-generated content and compare it with commercially produced content. We have made extensive measurements of several different language Wikipedias, Flickr, YouTube, and Twitter. Our results give insight into the behavior of users.