How interactive is content on the Web anyway?

The Internet has always been hailed for being interactive. A post on NewTeevee today “how interactive is online video?” triggered me to think about how interactive the web in fact is. Of course the Web is interactive on the level of communication (but so is your phone). And the Web is also interactive on the level of information (think Wikipedia and the likes). But how interactive is the Web when it comes to entertainment? What I mean is interactivity by which entertaining content is being altered, preferably enhanced, by interaction between producer and consumer (or prosumer and coduser). So my question is: How Interactive is the Web anyway?

First of all when we look at sites with user generated content only a small percentage of the users of these sites actually contribute. The rest merely watches, reads, laughs and leaves. (only 2% of YouTube’s user base uploads content, according to Jeben Berg of Youtube)

The same phenomenon can be seen in blogs. In most cases someone writes a post, readers react and that’s it. The reactions are in general not taken into a version 2.0 of the post, so there is nothing like a conversation going on.

And then there is the point made in the earlier mentioned post on online video. How interactive is online video? You watch it, you might share it, leave a small comment but is that interactive? Even the sharing part is not new because in TV people also tell each other what’s on what they should watch.  

Does it matter? Of course not but let’s stop fooling ourselves and talking about interactivity like it’s the holy grail. Let’s stop trying to activate communities to engage in a conversation (huh?). Entertainment content on the Web is good, bad, professionaly made or user generated, but it is not really interactive.

p.s. as pointed in the post on NewTeevee there are some handsome initiatives on creating interactive content like this one, this one and this.