AUTHOR: Sarah Cove TITLE: The "User-Generated" Distinction DATE: 1/08/2007 02:59:00 PM ----- BODY: In a recent USA Today column, Kevin Maney called 2006 the year of the buzzword "user-generated", and said that this phenomenon is likely to fade away over the next year and make way for the "Next Big Thing." I listened to his article as cynical about this "fad." He says, "some of this [user-generated content] is fascinating...much of it, however is dreadful." He cites Google's purchase of YouTube as one such event. But I don't think the problem lies in the phenomenon, and instead in the distinction he makes of it. By declaring "user-generated" a "buzzword," and "over-hyped"--moments when people go "bonkers" over the possibility of life changing completely because of a development, as he says happened with artificial intelligence, interactive TV, and blogs-- he unnecessarily trivalizes the phenomenon. After having a short conversation with a colleague about this, I think it would be more useful and interesting to distinguish this conversation differently. And currently that might mean calling it, "events that I don't understand right now and can't say how they will or won't shape the space of conversations in the future. "Over-hyped" phenomena, like blogs and social networking have reshaped our lives. People are valuing different things than they did before: Google did spend $1.7 billion dollars on YouTube. People are moving to build their identities in different ways, spaces, and networks: professional journalists from the Washington Post and other mainstream newspapers are going online to work for The Politico. And to trivalize this disappears a useful framing of our current space as a way to understand the concerns that are forming it, and how it is, and isn't, taking care of those concerns. ----- --------