Bill Tancer, GM at Web research firm Hitwise, shook up the crowd yesterday at the Web 2.0 conference by revealing that the emperor –while possibly not stark naked — is severely underdressed. According to Hitwise research, only a minute fraction of users are generating and uploading content to all those Web 2.0 sites built around “user-generated content.” Just .16% of users are adding their own content to Web 2.0 poster child Youtube, and photo site Flickr does only a little better, with .2 %. The winner here is Wikipedia, with 4.5% participation. The rest of the crowd is just voyeuristic Then again, I’ve never noticed Youtube suffering from a lack of content, so maybe a fraction of a percent is a completely sustainable model.But the real story, to me, is the surprising age distribution of Web 2.0 content generators. Pundits always hold up Gen X and Y — born to the Web — as the participatory generation. But — surprise — it turns out that Wikipedia is built on the backs of participating 35-55 year olds. Even YouTube skews older than you’d think, with most active uploaders weighing in north of 35. In other words, old farts rule. As a card-carrying oldish guy myself, I say bravo. Now it’s time for my nap. Technology Industry