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Umair: It’s user-generated “context”

Started by mathewi · 11 months ago

Umair Haque, the new-media theorist who writes the Bubblegeneration blog and recently launched the Havas Media Lab, has a great take on the phenomenon of “user-generated content” and how it hasn’t really measured up to what many proponents — both o ... Continue reading »

6 comments

  • antje

    11 months ago

    I don't think anyone mistakes comments or wall postings or my social network itself as content. But I think blogs, story & literary sites, citizen journalism sites, and sites like Yelp and even a few forums are content. They are not context. Yelp maybe is straddling the middle but I don't think all user generated stuff is "contextual" (blogs being the best example) unless we assume that any blogger is now the content provder (not a user) and users are everyone else who reads and comments on the blog.
    reply
  • mathewi

    11 months ago

    Good point, Antje. I don't think Umair is saying that there is no
    user-generated content at all -- although I like your idea that if you
    generate content, then by definition you're not a user. In any case,
    I think he's saying that the majority of what people are thinking
    about as user-generated content is less content and more context
    around content created by someone else.
    reply
  • Tish Grier

    11 months ago

    Umair is right-on with "user generated context"--it's something marketing has acknowledged in its support of word-of-mouth marketing. W.O.M. extends out to messages on boards, blog posts, and other postings on social networks. When it is positive, it becomes a value-add for the product: someone's giving you an endorsement and situating your product in their community. That person is giving your product a context. In marketing, more "context" (which translates to w.o.m.) then becomes more product loyalty and product sales. It's letting users create the context, not the advertisers, and by doing so, the users let other users know the value.

    Now, if newspapers could realize what they produce is product, and that blog posts don't "steal" their content, but, rather, add context and then link back to it, then we can all sing kumbaya. But it's probably not that simple.
    reply
  • mathewi

    11 months ago

    I agree, Tish -- sounds simple when you put it that way :-)
    reply
  • kareem

    11 months ago

    when i worked at espn from 02-04 we looked at blogs as a layer of content that would add colour and texture to the discussion kicked off by the primary source (often us, but also nytimes, wapo -- basically bigger media).

    and by "we" i mean the geeks - the journos & editors were terrified of pointing people off-site b/c they looked at customer-created information as a substitute, not a compliment.
    reply
  • mathewi

    11 months ago

    Thanks for the comment, Kareem -- I hope that we are getting beyond that kind of viewpoint, but it seems like it's taking an awfully long time.
    reply

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