Bloglines - User-Generated Content

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E M E R G I C . o r g Rajesh Jain's Weblog on Emerging Technologies, Enterprises and Markets

User-Generated Content Nivi writes: User-generated content is all the rage! Unfortunately, there is no such thing. Users are not interested in generating content. They are interested in communicating. Blogs are not content. They are communication. The "15 million" bloggers out there do not consider themselves publishers. Probably only a few hundred or a thousand of those bloggers are "publishing". The rest of them are communicating. Just like they communicate over email or telephone or IM. They are regular folks who are just talking. When the communication is captured so it is not ephemeral, you get what people are calling "user-generated content". But it is not content at all, it is communication that has been recorded for all to see. This distinction is subtle but very important. Don't expect your users to generate content. Instead, support their efforts to communicate.