Via Paidcontent: 

During his keynote presentation, Barry Diller expressed reservations about the whole user-generated content phenomenon, implying that form hasn’t evolved beyond TV’s Funniest Home Videos. “The universe of people with talent is very finite. [User-gen content] is mostly for a small circle of friends. And while some things are amusing, there’s only so many times you can watch someone’s grandmother slip and fall.”

I think that media companies need to take a step back and properly assess how the scale, reach, easy creation nature of UGC can fit into their cohesive content strategy.  It’s akin, to some extent, how comments on boards etc., added average time spent on a site to improve audience metrics to get to an end goal: to sell ads against publisher-created content…

At my old company, IGN (technically, IGN bought my old company), I recall them saying that their message boards were incredibly sticky.  That spilled over to a high retention of their audience etc., the comments were indeed UGC but no way did advertisers jump on that, they jumped on the main page, main channels etc.

Media companies need to do the same with advertisers: showcase the publisher created content (which is all we have on WatchMojo.com, and yes, indeed I am biased by virtue of WatchMojo.com being one of the largest producers of original content for broadband) and then use UGC to bolster the overall metrics and reach of the platform you are offering advertisers.

But to think that advertisers are going to come in and jump all over videos of “someone’s grandmother slip and fall” is sheer lunacy.  I am not sure if we are in a bubble because investors are actually quite sedate, but looking back at the 21st century first few years, the obsession of UGC will make us think of the obsessive rush to dot.com-icize one’s company in the late 20th century.

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