We’re not simply users anymore
January 3rd, 2007 by Lloyd Gofton
Jemima Kiss picks up the ‘User Generated Content’ argument today on Organ grinder.
To bring you up to speed, the term ‘User Generated Content’ is not well-liked, for a number of reasons, the main one being it distinguishes between ‘users’ and ‘publishers’. But we are all publishers now…so is the term relevant?
Well, no it’s not. Of course the other side of the argument is that there should still be some distinction between traditional (big) publishers and new (small or individual) publishers.
This new strand to the argument stems from Scott Karp’s, ‘Death of the User’ post on The Blog Herald over the holidays, which encapsulates the issue beautifully.
I’m not going to bore people with my own stab at a new term right now, as I think the argument has wider repercussions, but I am going to make a point.
Whoa there people! I understand that ’User Generated Content’ is not an accurate or pretty term, and I appreciate the importance of defining the media revolution correctly, but let’s keep it sensible. Some of the new names being banded around are not going to help the situation, accurate or not.
We need a simple definition that is inclusive rather than exclusive, a term that will help to grow web publishing in its many guises and forms, not channel it away from the masses and banish it to the big acronym grave yard.
Can I make a call for common sense as well as accuracy when deciding on new terms?
January 9th, 2007 at 5:35 pm
My favourite replacement for UGC (at its most awful as a pointless acronym) is homemade content. Can’t remember where I first saw that suggested. It’s a non-technical, normal use of existing language (hurrah!) and it gestures at a distinction between stuff that’s done by people for the hell of it and commercially-motivated endeavours, which is one of the things that people often seem to be getting at.
Most daft bits of pseudo-technical jargon can usually be avoided by making the effort to write with clarity and precision. We’re all of us, aren’t we, at various times, readers, watchers, writers, photographers, video-makers, publishers, etc. and sometimes, yes, users, customers, consumers…the correct term depending entirely on the context and not on some simplistically bilateral distinction?