Daily Motion is the very successful French equivalent of YouTube, the user-generated content video website. The site was launched in April 2005 and has already expanded into several international editions. The company now counts 80 staffers, receives about 15,000 daily videos and has 38 million monthly unique visitors – more than the majority of French national newspaper websites. About 11.6 million unique users have watched online video in the past six months in France.

Rogard started working at Daily Motion in July 2007, after having worked at the Ministry of Culture, monitoring new media and technologies.

News: a dominant category for UGC?

Contrarily to what one might think, ‘News’ is among the three most-visited categories, along with ‘Music’ and ‘Humor’ (News visitors amount to about 8% of total traffic, a significant proportion considering there are about 30 different categories). As for daily newspapers, Daily Motion profited from the heightened news interest caused by last year’s presidential elections.

'News' is among Daily Motion's three most-visited categories, drawing about 8% of total traffic.

The choice of whether an item is ‘News’ and the hierarchy of postings is entirely left to users. However, Daily Motion’s content team does exercise editorial oversight regarding the videos that are brought up to the homepage. Interestingly for a UGC site, Daily Motion has chosen to ‘bring forth’ to its homepage only content posted by professional partners (often traditional media outlets, such as France 24) or by its ‘MotionMakers’, Daily Motion’s appellation for its regular quality contributors.

(Motion Makers sign a basic contract with Daily Motion, to guarantee their content is their own and provide a basis for monetary compensation – not the case at this point but being developed. There are no clauses about ethics, professionalism or accuracy though: “they’re not journalists,” said Rogard.)

According to Rogard, the news judgments for the homepage typically “don’t have real differences” with those of newspapers, since much of the content is issued by traditional media in the first place.

Eventually, Daily Motion will launch thematic homepages, including one for news, which will feature a bigger selection of editorially-picked news postings.

Daily Motion (UGC)… phone… Newspapers

Newspapers have much to learn from the success of UGC sites such as Daily Motion, including in the news field. “Today traditional media have a hard time being online, apart from big brand names, which have successfully transitioned to the Web, such as Le Monde,” said Rogard. So why do users come to Daily Motion for news?

Aggregation: “A certain number of internet users come seeking the multiplicity of sources. (…) We ourselves don’t cover all topics, but our partners do. Why go only to the Figaro’s website, when on Daily Motion you can access say business news seen from the perspective of the Figaro, and at the same time view international news with, for example, Libération.”

Increasingly, the more successful news sites will be those that supply multiple sources, even among traditional original content providers. Among some newspaper websites that have started to aggregate content, in one form or another: USA Today and The New York Times’ Technology page link to external sites, The Arizona Republic has launched community micro-sites.

News consumers may also appreciate the egalitarian treatment Daily Motion gives to posts from traditional media and those from individuals and independent outlets.

Unfortunately, it’s still too early in Daily Motion’s history for Rogard to say whether there are definite trends concerning news consumption, users’ preferences, or the typical profile of the news consumer.

Competition and complementarity

For news content providers, the obvious issue here is whether sites like Daily Motion, as they attract more users, centralize more content, and develop more tools to filter these news items, will end up – if not already – being competitors.

“It’s not as much competition as it is a way to feed off each other,” said Rogard.

The good news for newspapers is that: “We’re not a newsroom, we’re content aggregators, and this content is scratch material,” he said. “Scratch material is created by journalists, people whose job it is to create it, who do an investigative work.”

“We also believe that the value of news will regain its rights and its place in the long run,” he said.

This is why Daily Motion has partnered with several professional news organizations, including Le Figaro, Le Monde, Libération, France Info, Rue89 and France 24, to carry their content on its site. According to Rogard, it’s a win-win situation: newspapers take advantage of the increased visibility of their coverage and brand name, and Daily Motion gets free quality content that generates traffic.

Traditional media “understand more and more the syndication model. It’s not because people see their videos on Daily Motion that they’re not going to come to their site,” said Rogard, mentioning media’s once-common fear of cannibalization.

“That’s not the case at all. All the online experiments show that audiences accumulate themselves, add to each other, and don’t cannibalize each other at all.”

Arguably, both parties could seek to cash in additional revenue: news outlets can argue that they are providing quality content that drives traffic to the UGC site, and Daily Motion can argue that it brings visibility – thus advertising – to the news organizations. Thus currently, partnering organizations and Daily Motion have a neutral financial agreement. In the future though, as a few strong brand names stand out and Daily Motion grows, Rogard “undoubtedly” predicts that a revenue-sharing model will emerge.

While newspapers may only post a video every so often, a partner like France 24 can publish up to 30 videos daily. By going through Daily Motion, newspapers also get access to a free video platform, which they can embed on their own website. The UGC site also offers to ‘skill’ (provide a color-coded skin) a webpage for its partners.
 
Evidently, a number of traditional media brands have opted for this easy-to-use option. Some newspaper websites have went the other way, actually launching their own video user-generated content website (see Dagbladet in Norway and The Orange County Register in the US).

Nothing such as ‘non-information’, simply more information

Another issue at hand with the rise of UGC is the evolution – furthermore, the deterioration – of the very definition and pertinence of ‘News’. What was deemed trivia yesterday may be considered ‘news’ today, and this transformation seems to be gaining speed.

Online users won't be misled by 'user-generated' news as long as the source of content is clearly signaled.

Rogard didn’t want to enter the debate about the certification of journalists versus bloggers or amateur content-providers. On the other hand, he didn’t agree with the notion that the – recent – boom of news sources and information pieces coincides with the diminished pertinence of information.  “Internet users, contrarily to what is said, are very educated. The multiplicity of sources educates the users, who are capable to filter this information.”

Furthermore, Rogard disputes the idea that UGC is giving birth, or at least giving newsworthiness, to what was once ‘non-information’ – which doesn’t even exist, he says. “I don’t know if the notion of news has changed, but there is more news and more sources.”

In other words, the information has always been there, it simply is made potentially more widely visible nowadays. Daily Motion and UGC sites, unlike traditional media’s conventional editorializing, don’t make any judgment calls on the content. Instead, they must provide intelligent tools to help users filter and select this news: ie, clearly signaling where the content comes from (whether from Motion Makers, users, or professionals). The site has also created information-sharing groups – in the manner of social networking websites – to help people interact and find content related to niche content and common interests.

Something newspapers are starting to do, by offering editorial and filtering tools that are different from the traditional section-based organization. Last word of advice from Rogard to newspapers: “there’s a real desire by Internet users to participate (…) Newspapers are sometimes in a kind of schizophrenia in their relationship to readers, between the desire to make them contribute and at the same time wanting to fixate them in sections where they don’t always feel comfortable.”

Daily Motion’s experience shows “that a larger opening to users can be beneficial.”

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Source: Martin Rogard, director editorial content Daily Motion