The Increase of Websites with User Generated Content

Can anyone remember what the Internet was like before the rise of user generated content websites? Really, what did half of the population do without its MySpace, Facebook, Wikipedia, or YouTube? After all, user generated content websites are increasingly taking over as some of the biggest websites out there.

User generated content, also known as Consumer Generated Media, refers to a number of types of media content that is produced by its end users and available to the public.

The term user generated content first surfaced in the year 2005, after arising in web publishing and new media content production circles. At that time, media production was expanding to include new user generated content technologies that included digital video, blogging, podcasting, news, gossip, research, mobile phone photography, and wikis. Websites with user generated content also commonly feature a combination of open source, free software, and flexible licensing.

While many websites with user generated content are often of social networking nature (MySpace, Facebook), there are many other types of websites with user generated content. Some of these other types include discussion boards, blogs, news sites, trip planners, customer review sites, photo sharing sites, games, and/or any other website that presents the opportunity for the consumer to share their knowledge or familiarity with a certain product, experience, or person.

Some leading examples of websites with user generated content, other than those already mentioned, are Epinions, TripAdvisor, Flickr, Outloud TV, Revver, Friends Reunited, Digg, Piczo, and G2Bux.

In some cases, user generated content can make up only a portion of a website. For instance, the ever popular Amazon.com features the majority of content as prepared by administrators, but it also consists of numerous user reviews of the products being sold, submitted by the site’s regular visitors. There are numerous other websites like Amazon.com that incorporate this same feature.

User generated content is typically completely or partially monitored by website administrators in order to avoid offensive content or language, copyright infringement issues, or to ascertain that the content is relevant to the website’s broad theme.

Recently in 2006, websites with user generated content was widely recognized and adopted by mass media. In 2006, CNN launched CNN iReport, which is a project designed to bring user generated news content to CNN. User generated content was also notably featured in Time Magazine’s 2006 Person of the Year, “you.” The “you” referred to the millions of people who contribute to user generated media, such as YouTube and Wikipedia.

The concept of user generated content largely appeals to web users of all ages. Although people of younger ages seem to dominate the social networking, photo, and video sharing websites of today, there is still a good percentage (25%) of those aged 61 to 75 that indicate their preference to contribute online as well.

It has also been suggested numerous times that consumers actually prefer user generated content over formal marketing communications. This may be due to the issue of trust – people are more likely to trust content from their peers than actual companies marketing their products.

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