August 11, 2006
User-generated content? Welcome to the party, pal
Dear Web 2.0 hype machine:Apparently, the navel-gazing and self-congratulatory efforts have paid off. User-generated content, or as some of the hip kids like to tout it: UGC, is the new hot thing in the world of online behavior.
Brilliant.
Hate to burst your bubble kids, but this is nothing new.
The Web, and the simple no-frills Internet before it, have always been about user-generated content. The most prolific user-generated content tool of all time? Flickr? YouTube? Digg?
Try email my friend. Not a proprietary tool, the concept itself. Try a bunch of geeks like me creating BBSes and MUDDs in the late 80s and Web pages in the mid 90s.
You see, it's always been about user-generated content. The problem was that this user-generated content got co-opted by large corporations as a marketing tool. So co-opted, in fact, that we forgot the original start of this whole thing.
(It really goes back even further to communication among individuals that was co-opted to become news and advertising and whatnot, but I'm trying to keep this brief.)
It's not that the user-generated content is a new thing. It's the fact that said user now has the ability to generate and share that content more easily, rapidly, and widely than ever before.
No more slogging through code. Blog. No more sending out tapes. YouTube. No more hoofing your book. Flickr.
And that truly is interesting. But let's not forget the context.
Love and kisses,
Rick
Technorati tags: User generated content, UserGeneratedContent, User-generated content
User-generated content? Welcome to the party, pal
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