Comments on: 2008: The Year UGC Died

By: tvbee

tvbee — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 11:34:59 +0000

These guys have a nice concept: Create a video according to their scripts and get money for your effort. Also they an interesting video advertising system.

http://newteevee.com/2008/08/12/imcandy-solicits-sellable-and-sexy-ugc-videos/

By: Figure Four Media » The trend from UGC to professional content

Figure Four Media » The trend from UGC to professional content — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 19:07:04 +0000

[...] job keeping tabs on the latest developments in the online video world. I particularly liked this recent post, which focuses on the migration from user generated content to professionally produced content on [...]

By: Manix

Manix — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 16:29:22 +0000

Agree or disagree, forecasting is not the best sport nowaday, ask WIRED.

By: Ben Homer

Ben Homer — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 15:58:47 +0000

To clarify, it’s dead in the sense of being considered content rather than personal information sharing which are two completely different things.

There was a perception that UGC was part of mass media, YouTube’s model was to distribute it as such, but mass distribution of UGC is a losing proposition. UGC has shown that it can’t compete with professional content, it’s impossible to advertise against. The best model is to offer users a place to privately share their information within a community of their friends like Facebook for a nominal fee.

I’ve expanded on this notion here: http://www.onlinevideowatch.com/facebook-will-never-turn-a-profit-on-ads-alone/

By: Andy

Andy — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 08:58:33 +0000

I think Jeremy makes a great point. It is only dead to those wanting to own and comodify it. The people who are doing it see it as alive and kicking.

Perhaps it’s better to say that the attempts to own, market and exploit it by the mainstream media have failed. But maybe its like the Godfather. When something turns against us it is dead to us.

By: Jeremy Campbell

Jeremy Campbell — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 21:08:23 +0000

UGC is only dead to slightly dead to most advertisers, not the people who publish the content. It’s likely that the majority of these people only want to see others rate and comment on their content, and don’t expect to really make money off of it.

YouTube will need to figure out a business model around UGC if they hope to survice long term, or heavily monetize their 4% professional inventory, or start filtering and only keep a small percentage of UGC, or maybe shift their whole model away from UGC altogether, which would completely change their brand and community.

YouTube is the player to watch in this space, as the bandwidth costs around it are high, the monetization value is low, and there will be increased pressure from Google to become profitable ASAP.

By: Corey Kronengold

Corey Kronengold — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 16:31:00 +0000

One caveat……Direct Marketers. They will at least be able to leverage the insight into the audiences through targeting technologies to provide a trickle of revenue to the UGC sites. I don’t think they’ll be able to float an entire industry on .5% CTR, but somebody is taking classes at the University of Phoenix.

Once technology is able to filter out truly objectionable content from simply user-generated, CPA deals will still provide ads and ad revenue for anyone willing to take a shot in the dark.