You
December 18, 2006
Customer generated media.
Giving the consumer the power to create what they want.
Listening to the masses, not the bosses.
Quality content isn’t just created by professionals with degrees and offices and dedicated marketing groups. More and more, that content is being created through common sense – by listening to the consumer and by giving them control.
This means interactive games. YouTube. Personalized advertising. Internet savvy. Because no one knows customers better than they know themselves.
This new chapter in customer-driven media and content is now being embraced by major media outlets. The Argus Leader and KELO realize it – both groups have helped raise the power of “person-on-the-street reporting.” Bloggers are becoming important – not because of their journalistic skills, but because of their freedom and visibility. Ease of use, a tendency to skew towards a specific demographic, and a fresh feeling of newness doesn’t hurt either.
The amount of people that read blogs, participate in online social networking, and watch online videos has grown exponentially over the past year. This is the Web 2.0. This is the future of marketing. Of advertising. Of journalism. Of all content, in every form.
Welcome to the future. The person of the year isn’t in charge of a large endeavor of change anymore.
No. Now, the person of the year is developing that change on his or her own. The person of the year is YOU.
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This is a great conversation starter. So information is democratized, and I’d agree that this is generally a good thing.
I remember as a teenager reading an opinion column by some member of British Parliament. This was in a national publication of some sort, and the note on the author made it clear that he was an Important Person.
But his writing wasn’t that great. And his point of view was muddy. Even then, before I’d had 20-plus years of writing experience, I thought I could do better. But he had a forum and I didn’t, because he was Important.
User-generated content changes all that. Now I have a forum (although that doesn’t mean anybody reads it).
On the other hand — I have to say that I think the new Argus Leader is more like a grade school newsletter than a periodical containing actual news.
Does a serious newspaper publish random photos of people’s kids and pets every day? Is it right to delegate all national and world news to a single page? And, most important, should e-mailed opinions from unidentified individuals receive as much space as pieces from experts with years of experience and knowledge in a particular field?
What I like about the Argus remodeling is that it encourages conversation.
What I don’t like is that it discourages the use of standards regarding expertise and writing quality. Now everybody is an expert and everybody can write equally well.
And while Web 2.0 is great, I find it easy to get lost in the blogosphere. With so many experts and opinions and points of view, I can spend hours drifting from one place to another. That’s not conducive to actual living. The alternative is to walk away quickly, which leaves me feeling that I haven’t covered the bases.
Input is uncontrolled. We have RSS feeds to control output, but it’s still pretty general. Eventually, we’ll need more powerful sorting systems so we can get only what we need, all of the time. Hello RSS 2.0?
Exactly. The Argus Leader has replaced reporting with user-generated articles instead of supplimenting the original paper with the opinions of the people. No world news, but two pages of pictures — that’s not a newspaper to me.
We’re dealing with a very young form of journalism, one that is constantly changing and updating to meet the needs of its audience. But we’re also dealing with a very open form of journalism. And no matter what, we’re going to be flooded with bad style, stupid arguments, and worthless time-wasters.
I equate this with the world of magazines. Every single group has a magazine or publication — even Silky Terrier owners. Likewise, every group now has a blog (not for Silky Terrier owners, yet, but almost). Now, it’s up to us. Just like the choice between The Nation and Us Weekly, we need to make an attempt to filter out the bad and keep the good.
From the standpoint of advertising and marketing, it’s even mroe beneficial. It’s so much easier for us to figure out the wants and needs of our targets. Why? Because our targets are constantly telling us — clamoring for someone to listen!
What I find exciting about user-generated content is the idea that the thoughts of the author are genuine. With a personal forum, there’s not nearly the influenced of sponsorship, and the bottom line.
I’ve worked at two different TV news stations. In many cases there is one person, or a very small group of people making the choices of what is broadcast to the public. While these Important People have years of experience and are very skilled writers, why should they filter what is deemed news?
What scares me about “The News” is that many people take whatever is said or written at face value, as the absolute Truth. In reality, the motiviations of what is deemed “news” are often questionable. When working in a top 15 TV news market (the perception in TV news is that the bigger markets have higher quality news content and production value), I worked for an Executive Producer who believed ALL news should have the impact of the OJ Simpson car-chase, becasue it’s what viewers want to see. This decision-maker’s theory was that if a story was “sexy” it would raise Neilsen ratings. Meanwhile the legitimate, albeit dry, story of what’s happening in city government would very often fall by the wayside. The fact is that everything we see or read has been edited. The simple decision to post this article is a form of editing. But, what I like about the blogosphere is that I can choose what I read, what I see, and what I hear. This way, I have the ability to take in more small niblets of news and make my own decisions regarding Truth. And like Corey said, from a marketing standpoint that empowers us to find out what is the closest Truth to our target audience.