100 reasons why user generated content is not junk

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Yesterday, I came across a post on Business Week providing the two opposite views on why and why not is user generated content is junk.I am a pro UGC and couldn’t resist generating my own user generated content in favour of UGC. My new blog is hungry for traffic and to make it Digg compatible - I have titled the post as "100 reasons why user generated content is not junk". I hope, I land up on the Digg home page today. I also pray that, some nerd finds my post and brings my site down due to the overwhelming ‘you have been slashdotted’ effect. That would be sort of Nobel prize for UGC for me. Shit ! I am such a pathetic UGC attention seeker.

So here goes my - 100 reasons why user generated content is not junk

1. Because, the professional content is not GOLD.
Mediocracy rules the professional world, every person who holds the job of a journalist or producer cannot qualify as the professional. Professional is not equal to Professionalism. Great thinkers and philosophers of the past didn’t have any professional degree but we still call them great thinker and don’t rebuke their ideas by saying that ‘its user generated philosophy’ or thought.

2. Upstart to startup to the ‘Creative Genius’
Dell, Gates, Jobs, Page and many others do not have a master degree in business, we don’t call their businesses as the ‘user generated business’ - the merit lies with the results and not with who created  and how it was created. The UGC creators are the guys who are taking their first step towards creativity, some will fall flat, some will be satisfied with just one success story and won’t pursue it further, some of them will just enjoy that 2 seconds of fame and some of them will rise and shine and would enjoy the full glory. The same stuff happens in every walk of life and in every field. Yanni, before he turned into a successful musician was student of philosophy, if I remember correctly.

3. UGC is freedom & democracy
Digg becomes the most popular alternative social news site and the same users who make it successful revolt against it, when it tries to control things and Digg has to bow down to user pressure. Can you do the same with your news paper or television channel ?.

4. UGC Sows the seeds of creativity
Millions of users post billions of photos on Flickr, some of them post photos straight out of their toilets and some of them post that most ‘precious moment in life’ Users learn what to do and what not to do. Lot’s of Flickrish site start popping up. Digital camera & camera phone makers are having a great time. Is this junk expression, junk realism, junk creativity, junk friends, junk families, junk landscapes, junk portraits, junk close ups - who has the right to call this junk. Nobody is qualified to judge the creativity of the a 16 year old teen with extra surge of hormones and a camera phone to shoot OR to judge the creativity of 40 year old stressed out executive who finds extreme edgy joy in spotting stupid signs on the road.

5. Because sharing is a very human like
Bloggers and social media do the entire modern mankind a great favour. How many doctors have handed over to you piece of paper which say ‘top 10 things to better manage your diabetes’. How many photographers friends of yours are ready to share the ‘photoshop tricks and tips’ with you. It is these not-so-professional users who come to your rescue, learn the hard way, share it with you and learn more and share more. What if they are supported by  Adsense or Amazon. You also pay the fees to professional doctors, lawyers and such, do you always get their time, attention and advice ?.

6. It’s just the Planet of Apes
Our very first learning experience is just like apes, we observe, we mimic and we start doing things. As we grow older, we start having a misconception ‘ we are original’. If there is no problem of plenty in UGC, that means we are not evolving. UGC is a massive playground for testing Darwin’s theory. UGC is a proof that we are evolving - evolution of producers, distributors and technology

7. Evolving Ecosystem
If Industrial Lights & Magic shaped SFX in movies, UGC is shaping the media, technology and users themselves. UGC is not alone, it’s the ecosystem of producers, creators, contributors, curators, fowarders, commentors, viewers, technology, media, gadgets, devices, millions of codes and still counting.

8. Platform for professionals too
Who says user generated = amateur content?. UGC ecosystem is the plaform for professionals to showcase their creativity and rise in their field, the chance they would never get if they had to compete within the strict rules of any competition / corporate and standard set of qualifiers. Whatever that doesn’t make it to Oscar’s, is it not creative ?. UGC has provided a platform to millions of professional, who would other wise never get a second or even a first chance to become Super Stars and yeah they are much much better and bearable than ‘XYZ Idols’

9. Because there is no News on News Television & No Music on a Music Television.
Mainstream media has created a huge black hole for the content. News channels project political propoganda and no news, and music channels show you the dumb tricks of jack asses and no music.

10. UGC has no boundaries, it’s truely a ’small planet’
A kid from Bangalore enjoys mentos and cola experiment done in US and a techie from US gets computers tips and tricks from an Indian IIT graduate, also a full time blogger. Wonderful isn’t it - is this not our idea of the ideal world.

11. Would you ignore a milestone or an epic implementation, just b’cos it is UGC
Yawn !!!!!!! I don’t want to talk about Wikipedia now.

12. UGC is the C in Contribution, Collaboration and Creation
How have we forgotten the user generated codes, the user generated poetry of open source. The contribution is open, the collaboration is open and the creation is open.

13. Content is still the king
No matter how many millions of pages you create, there won’t be any page views, if you don’t have users, there won’t be any users if you don’t have good content - professional or user generated, whatever that it is.

14. Because MSM would never want you to be their user.
Slashdot - News for geeks, stuff that matters. Would the same stuff matter to the professional main stream media. It matters now.

15. It taught the MSM to be user friendly
For the first time, some amateurs told and proved the MSM what users really want. Not just bland news reporting, they want your original and raw open views and not what your media bosses told you to do. They also want some tips to enhance their lives and make things better - global warming is more important than global farting. If UGC is junk, why does the sames stuff that you see in blogosphere circulate in print the next day.

16. UGC is citizen media.
I love UGC when it gives an opportunity to some amateur blogger to provide unadulterated reporting from the land - where there is no citizen rights and no media.

Oh! that’s it - and I said 100 reasons - no problem - just spam my comments baby - and gimme 100 - gimme some ugc

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