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One of the reasons I use Blogger and not MSN Spaces is the fact that Blogger doesn’t have any ads next to my content, but what they do to is make my content searchable on Google. For some strange reason, when you search for HDTV switch 2009 I’m the first hit. Now for a blog I started a month or so ago, this is great since everyone uses Google, and more importantly Google will have ads for HDTV’s on the query results page.
It is user generated content and I agree that name isn’t the best but in reality that’s all it boils down to. The stuff we spit out onto the net is content, and we as users of services made it. Literally, the phrase fits the bill perfectly, but as I said earlier, I do prefer member. It makes me feel like I’m apart of something larger on the net that is beyond me. Communities I can take part in, interact with, and cause a change within. I am a member now of the new internet, not a simple reader as I was before. This is the heart of “web 2.0”
via Kevin Marks
http://epeus.blogspot.com/2005_11_01_epeus_arch...
so, off-topic. You have GOT to be kidding.ANOTHER SLIP! Jesus, OS X is going to be not only on Intel machines, but at v. 11 by the time Vista ships.
http://www.windowsitpro.com/windowspaulthurrott...
Photographers add photo's to Flickr and commenters add textual content plus encourage photographers to post more photos so at the end of the day they are both customers of Flickr but the kicker is that not only are they customers they are also directly helping to generate future revenue for Flickr.
I need to think on that some more and flesh that out some more as I have one beer too many to get too philosophical right now. ;)
"Agency" is about being able to assert control over your environment - so if a person is an "agent" then they are engaging in the act of asserting themselves. And unlike a "user" there's latent power to being an "agent." Agents effect change. Like catalysts.
Poor word choice leads to poor writing. The discussion should not be about what words we use but how we use them.
Google is a publisher, no more or less than any print magazine publisher, now and before - finding new vehicles to carry their ads, by talking to the people who are interested in that vehicle. Nothing at all new here, been going on for decades, 'Vogue', 'Fishing News', 'Auto-Age', 'PCWorld... What will be interesting to watch is Googles "success" once their hold on large areas of the information base begins to fragment. What happens as new entrants bring out the specialty interest 'magazines' and start to erode Googles ad base. Despite Googles PR about topicality, paying for their ads is still using a shotgun to shoot a sparrow.
As for blogs, 99% of them are asinine ramblings which have no relevance or interest to anyone but the writer and two friends - dear diary on screen. But the well-read blogs are nothing more or less than a small 'magazine' reaching a tight well-definable audience - maybe you can read "special interest magazine" in the paper world.
Enough with this seeking to catagorise, there is one word that covers all aspects you raise, it is an old word but it is accurate - audience. Don't matter one jot if you are selling software, advertising, ice-cream, or finding people to join a community or movement - if you don't find an audience, if you don't know how to talk to them, if you don't know when to talk to them, if you don't know what to say to say to them go home and grow tomatoes.
McLuhan got it wrong - the message is always more important than the medium.
Participant - Someone who takes part in an activity.
More precise is partaker.
Partaker - Someone who has or gives or recieves a part or a share.
btw if the Execs like my idea I told you I would like a marketing interview\internship..thank you..
What I care about is that Microsoft Antispyware doesn't detect the Sony Rootkit.
Screw you microsoft, and your corporate buddies.
"If you look at folks who make content as a partner..."
Call it partner generated content. If you're looking for something a little hipper, go with "pardner."
PGC. Has a nice ring. Sounds vaguely pharmaceutical.
I am an email user, even though I both send and receive. I don't "participate" in email. I am an MSN, Yahoo!, or Google user, even though I both create and consume.
Users "use" a service, regardless of what the service is.
And I don't "create content". I save my pictures, and I write my thoughts.
If you provide a useful service to me for free, then I really don't care if you make money from it.
But if you a company conspires to make money by using me, doesn't that make them the "users"?
It does one thing very well - manage photos - rather than trying to manage everything.
Anyhoot-most content is created under the ccc banner and if I were to use/copy other stuff for non revenue efforts , it becomes "fair use". Yeah, we have seen how the needle moves both ways.
Actually we are all trolls, when we look at it. We troll where conversations occur and based on that spew our minds out again.
The word "content" here also strives for distance from reality. Bloggers write articles or essays or journals. Flickr gets contributions of pictures. Content is the most loose description of some very specific things.
I hope I'm not starting some flamewar on "open content" now by recognizing that the author might have some connection to their writing.
Oh, did I say "author"? Maybe that's the noun and verb that is key?
As in, every citizen now has a voice (for better or worse).
Maybe we can think of users more in terms of web architecture. Web browsers used to be clients, using servers. Now, they're smart-clients that work with the servers - blurring the line between user and author. So say, "Intelligent Content authors"... yeah, maybe something like that.
"They are smart"
I had a longer, more biting post written, but it was lame. It basically came to a few points:
1) The average techie or pro blogger is not representative of the average person
2) Look at myspace/livejournal/blogger/msnspaces/etc. for the quality of the average user
Basically, don't give "users" too much credit. Most of what they "generate" is pure garbage. I defy you to look at a few hundred users on the services listed in 2 and tell me differently.
From the company's point of view, I don't think it's so bad to think of us as users, in the sense of a sysadmin's users, i.e the people you have to support.
From the, um, end-user perspective, I think most of us are fully aware of the bargain we make when we enjoy ad-supported stuff. If we don't want a company to make money off what we produce, we're free not to use their tools. Personally, I pay a little bit a month to use Typepad for blogging, because I think it works better.
I disagree with Tony Bishop about this. Language is very important and very small nuances can matter a great deal. "User," "customer," and the like do tend to allow objectivisation and separation from others who are participating with us in an economy, for example. It is useful to find terms that interrupt those automatic postures (even though the new will become automatic at some point).
A related example that I hadn't fully appreciated until recently, while minding my language around pattern languages, might be helpful (http://nfocentrale.net/TROST/info/2005/08/i0508....).
Consider the contrast between thinking of users as having problems for which our software is a solution and regarding how our customers will participate in a world of opportunity and action in which our software is employed as a valuable instrument.
I think the choice of terms for you is what works for you. What I treasure is that you are willing to examine what that is and what are the sources of "ick" that you don't want to perpetuate in your own speaking. Go for it.
Your friendly blog participant, orcmid [;
--rj
http://kepink.blogspot.com
Calling us "users" is an insult. It implies that we are somehow parasites. If we are contributing to your bottom line you should treat us with more respect than that.