Technologies that foster online collaboration and participation—for example, blogs that solicit customer feedback and wikis that allow employees to work together on documents—are gaining traction throughout the corporate world.¹ Few companies, however, have a clear understanding of what inspires users to contribute to such sites. Executives might start by looking to the world of online video sharing, another fast-growing test bed for participation. McKinsey research conducted in Germany finds that motives such as a desire for fame and a feeling of identification with a community encourage collaboration and participation. Such findings, we believe, offer insights into the way companies might tailor their Web 2.0 offerings.

To learn more about what motivates people to participate in collaborative technologies, we surveyed 573 users of four leading online video-sharing sites in Germany and then examined the blogs of one of the sites.² We observed that users cite a variety of reasons for posting content online—chief among them, a hunger for fame, the urge to have fun, and a desire to share experiences with friends (Exhibit 1). While some users were open to the idea of being compensated for their contributions, that wasn’t a primary driver: the people we studied weren’t paid...