Content Sharing

Where social networks allow users to share all manner of content and media with one another, sites like YouTube and Flickr allow them to share a specific kind of content. For example, YouTube is a site where users can upload and view videos of almost any kind. Flickr serves the same purpose for photos. Here, content is the focal point, where users don’t need to create a page to participate, and if they do, those pages need not contain much, if any, personal information.

Like many other UGC sites, YouTube and Flickr allow users to post comments regarding others’ content. This again fosters a freewheeling exchange of ideas and opinions—sometimes polite, sometimes not.

BLOGS

The advent of blogs was considered a tipping point for UGC. It was the moment when UGC went from a small but significant component of the Internet experience to a predominant source of entertainment, information, and debate. Although blogs had been around in one form or another since the mid 1990s, it was the 1998 launch of Open Diary that turned them into a UGC phenomenon.

Open Diary was one of the fi rst providers of blogging software, and the fi rst to facilitate user comments. Allowing readers to reply to blog entries allowed for the kind of freewheeling interaction that is today the hallmark of blogging and UGC in general. Blog is short for Weblog, a term that denotes a personal diary or journal maintained on the Web. In its purest form, a blog is just that, a personal journal maintained by an individual, updated frequently, and viewable by anyone on the Internet.

The entries generally appear in reverse chronological order, meaning the most recent is at the top of the page and others can be found by scrolling down, with archived entries available through links at the bottom or sides of the page. Blogs have always spanned a wide range of content. Some consist of little more than weekly updates about one’s pets, while others become hotbeds of political discussion, even influencing debate on a national scale. But as “pure” blogs gained popularity, media companies and corporations began to appropriate their style and themes. Publications like The New York Times and Newsweek launched blogs on which their reporters shared casual observations. Soon even CEOs of major corporations were blogging, usually as a form of public relations. As of December 2006, 19% of the fastest-growing private companies in the U.S. reported use of blogging as a form of communication.

Today, some of the most popular blogs are maintained by corporations that make a profit through advertising. Perhaps the best example is Gawker, a network of blogs that include some of the Web’s most popular sites. Its namesake, Gawker.com, is a running commentary on New York media, celebrities, and culture, written in an acerbic, often profane tone, that’s become a must-read for New York media professionals.

The Gawker network also boasts Deadspin (sports), Consumerist (packaged goods), Wonkette (politics), and Fleshbot (adult industry). While it is sometimes argued that sites like Gawker.com, or the Huffi ngton Post are not true UGC because they use salaried contributors or take submissions from media professionals, they do retain one hallmark of blogs that mark them as a major UGC platform: user comments. Because users are invited to leave remarks below each post, they foster freewheeling conversations that frequently take on a life of their own.

These conversations become a permanent addendum of the original posts, and are often as much of the entertainment as the post itself (some sites, like Gawker, allow comment by invite only in an effort to ensure a higher level of discourse). While these comments are usually moderated, and slanderous or overly profane material can be edited out, most of the more popular blogs are hesitant to use that authority.

Early Forms of UGC

UGC has been a staple of the peer-to-peer experience since the dawn of the digital age. The earliest forms arrived in 1980 with Usenet, a global discussion network that allowed users to share comments and experiences of a given topic. Early versions of Prodigy, a computer network launched in 1988, also facilitated user discussions and comments, as did early versions of AOL. The late 1990s saw the rise of “ratings sites,” which allowed users to rate subjects based on any number of criteria, from physical appearance (ratemyface.com and hotornot.com) to professional competence (ratemyprofessors.com).

These spread quickly across the Internet, and brought with them controversy over the impact they could have on the lives of private people often unwittingly exposed to public scrutiny. Such controversies have increased as UGC sites have become more common and influential.

Another early form of UGC are forums; areas within content websites that allow readers to communicate with each other around topics related to the content. Even in this era dominated by social media sites, forums continue to be robust, controlled areas of user content. For example, CondeNet sites incorporated forums as early as 1995, and they are still excellent areas for marketers to research opinions and general trends.

What is User Generated Content?

User Generated Content (UGC), also known as consumer-generated media (CGM), refers to any material created and uploaded to the Internet by non-media professionals, whether it’s a comment left on Amazon.com, a professional-quality video uploaded to YouTube, or a student’s profile on Facebook. UGC has been around in one form or another since the earliest days of the Internet itself. But in the past five years, thanks to the growing availability of high-speed Internet access and search technology, it has become one of the dominant forms of global media. It is currently one of the fastest growing forms of content on the Internet.

UGC is fundamentally altering how audiences interact with the Internet, and how advertisers reach those audiences. In 2006, UGC sites attracted 69 million users in the United States alone, and in 2007 generated $1 billion in advertising revenue. By 2011, UGC sites are projected to attract 101 million users in the U.S.

Black Box Model "Consumer Behaviour"

The black box model shows the interaction of stimuli, consumer characteristics, decision process and consumer responses. It can be distinguished between interpersonal stimuli (between people) or intrapersonal stimuli (within people). The black box model is related to the black box theory of behaviourism, where the focus is not set on the processes inside a consumer, but the relation between the stimuli and the response of the consumer. The marketing stimuli are planned and processed by the companies, whereas the environmental stimulus are given by social factors, based on the economical, political and cultural circumstances of a society. The buyers black box contains the buyer characteristics and the decision process, which determines the buyers response.

The black box model considers the buyers response as a result of a conscious, rational decision process, in which it is assumed that the buyer has recognized the problem. However, in reality many decisions are not made in awareness of a determined problem by the consumer.

Voice of Society

Citizen Journalism has added a feather in media’s cap. Both print and electronic media have taken certain measures to engage people actively in the collating and presenting of news. Due to their limitations, the media tried to cope with the needs of the people by spreading its wings through citizen media.

Earlier, people irked by the lax judiciary and inept laws, had no option other than to wait for justice and their uplift. Elections were the only means through which they communicated with the government. By and by, improvement in the modes of media gave access to the masses. Resultantly, citizen journalism came into existence.

Is the platform for masses to interact with each other by contributing information or commentary on news events. Although citizen journalists are independent, they are bound not to write anything and everything. Now, people need to be aware and take care for those things, which they used to take for granted earlier.

Blogging, text or video messaging of public viewpoints and communicating through social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace, are some means of citizen journalism. In this manner, the active participation of public has gained momentum in India over past two years.

On the news channel NDTV, text messages from the viewers has forced courts to reopen long standing unresolved criminal cases and expedite the delivery of justice. After the tsunami and in the wake of terror attacks in Mumbai, eyewitness accounts sent in by SMS´s supplied early facts about such incidents. They have often exposed inadequacies in disaster management and emergency facilities on the spot.

Citizen Journalism

Citizen Journalism or Participatory Journalism is an evolving form of journalism through user generated content. When any common man in his capacity as a citizen of a nation takes up the initiative to report things or express his views about happenings around him then the occurrence is popularly termed as citizen journalism or participatory journalism.

Citizen Journalists are not bound by the conventional term of a journalist. Citizen journalists take up an initiative to express ideas irrespective of their educational or professional background. In a way this emerging form of journalism is promising a scenario of breaking free from media bias as well as taking local news on a global platform.

Citizen Journalism is a model pioneered by the innovative media to give power to the powerless, voice to the voiceless, authority to the weak and vigour to the commoners; whose plight and predicament was ignored earlier. The fundamental objective of this concept is to empower citizens. But this ideal is still like a half-blossomed bud, hoping to flourish with time. This form of journalism has given sovereignty to the citizens who report the drawbacks in the society and give details of facts omitted by the mainstream media, which went unreported earlier.

Citizens were empowered with "freedom of expression" and "right to information", which was often stymied with the virus of corruption.

It’s not only the citizens who benefited with concept but the mainstream media also took advantage of the active reporting of the citizens who the first at breaking news. The footage of assassination of the US president, John F Kennedy in the 60s, the footage of 9/11, the first pictures of Tsunami and even the London bombings was taken by the citizens first and journalists later. The journalists cannot be present everywhere but citizens are and sometimes capture pictures of the happening before mainstream media. In the case of recent tragedies like 7/11 bombings, Rahul Raj killing etc, all these incidents were captured by citizens first.