The Age Of User-Generated Content

Dec 31, 2006

Aside from my remarks on the negative connotation of the “user-generated” content expression this is in fact the age of mass-generated content as far as the Internet is concerned and this article in the Guardian aptly traces the slow evolution of this trend. The article talks about how the old media is reluctantly giving-in to the new-age definition of content.

But why such content is more acceptable to consumers? I think it’s not just the content on the social media websites that draws so many eye-balls, it’s also the ability to directly participate that makes them so hot realms. Most of the content for example on YouTube is lousy and you wouldn’t consider re-watching it more than once. But the strength of the website is, you can not only comment on the feeds and rate them, you can also respond by posting your own video feeds with no extra cost and hardware. For instance recently I recorded my 15-month-old daughter dancing to my whistling using my Canon digital camera and uploaded the video to YouTube so that my relatives scattered all over the world could watch it. Traditional media could have never empowered me in such a manner.

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