What do you mean, "user generated content"?
It's getting so cold in here... is the Weather Channel predicting an early ice age? Meteors?
That's the line of thought for many custom publishing agencies out there. We make content. You read it. That's our solemn agreement.
There are many reactions to user generated content -- avoid, deny, detract -- that are quickly failing many companies in our field. It's time to evolve the industry, it's time to understand the benefits and processes behind this user generated revolution. Or it's time to become fossil fuel.
Call it the cult of the amateur, call it noise -- but people are reading it and companies are finding value in it. People are consuming massive amounts of content produced by their peers. Hello Youtube? Hello Myspace? The walls between community and information are finally falling. Why were newspapers created? --To connect a dispersed world. How is this different from blogs?
Of course there is a place for custom media and custom publishing. I write this as we have publishers and crews heading to India, Dubai and Costa Rica to perform in-depth interviews and documentaries with visionaries, I write this as we have editors and designers working on world-wide distributed magazines and periodicals. And I write this as I help companies understand how to foster community, identify brand evangelists and start the conversation with social media.
Where do we belong in this new century of publishing? We are the conversationalists, we are the platform builders, we are the instigators. And we can be the leaders, if we choose it.
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