Business week poses this question as more studios jump into the online video space. They make the claim that people are simply not watching the user generated stuff as much and that people are gravitating to the commercially produced stuff. While I think that the buzz around UGC is sometimes overblown, This is a premature approach to relate to the medium. Of course, throw a popular celebrity in or make a deal with a huge social networking site and you will get the traffic, but I believe that we are just beginning to see what is going to come out of online video, in all it's forms.
The means of production are getting cheaper by the minute while the quality goes up. Partner that with the Apple-fication of most of these tools (i.e. so easy to use, my pet chicken could make a vid) and you will continue to see people using video to express themselves in very captivating and interesting ways. I agree, will people start to ignore yet another cute child dancing to Soulja Boy? Probably. Will they look for stuff that has more depth and higher production value? Absolutely. But behavior is not linear. They will look for that stuff as well as pay attention to other videos made by people who may only be slightly more talented than they are.
Link: Business Week
Tell the Potter Puppet Pals that users are not paying attention to UGC. 24 million people might disagree with you.
Polling who watched UGC is impossible. It's like guessing how many people are in front of a computer screen at any given time not to mention how many see it on cd after the fact or tv. They can poll all they want and the industry can claim they are getting more views with their professionally created material but that is like claiming victory over flowers. More people are supposed to watch the industries stuff. They pay out the nose for advertising campaigns and casting and god knows what else. I think UGC will increase as more and more countries have generations of kids growing up with the tools necessary to create them. Why wouldn't it?
Posted by: Poyla | November 20, 2007 at 04:19 PM