Andrew Keen must be laughing his [genitalia] off over this. That little [jerk] was right about all of it. Fast Company will be studied about this. In fact I know they are right now, for I had two Universities New Media Chairs contact me to discuss Fast Company after they watched my video and then watched Shel’s video. Truly a benchmark moment in their minds on how Fast Company is handling the transition to new media company.
While Loren put it quite humorously, there is a certain irony in the fact that Loren then delivers a longer set of analysis through what is the stereotypical UGC style video reply. Granted, he isn't running advertisements along side his videos, and to the best of my knowledge isn't doing so under any corporate sponsorship, so it isn't hypocrisy we're talking about here (though the TechRooster inspired by Shel's interviews is in danger of becoming a household brand).
My point being, essentially, that this is a hot topic, and it comes at a time when Accustream estimates that not only did 2007 UGC views account for somewhere around 22 billion views, but that it only trailed professional content views by only around 12 billion, a relatively small figure. That makes it fairly mainstream in most people's books.
So Why Can't You Show Me The Money?
Well, there's a large combination of factors at play here, but rather than detailing most of them, I think it's best that we go back to Loren's example. While some folks like FastCompany be somewhat adventurous and risk-taking in what it is they'd like to attach their name to, most folks still have attitudes and judgments not dissimilar to Feldman's. It goes beyond the type of slick and pre-produced image that corporations like to have their brand associated with, it speaks to the built in media savvy in our culture. When we see something that is supposed to be teaching us, informing us, or telling us something important, we expect to see the mini-explosions, sound effects, and three-dimensional gradient subtitles.
Instead, with UGC, we get a person or persons with an unsteady camera (or worse, a webcam), no makeup, producer or teleprompter. We get extra-long rambling question and answer sessions, in some cases. We get short, half-baked, and often hilarious opinions with others.
In essence, we get the same thing that we get on standard, "professional" video outlets, just without the super slick production values to cover up whatever else may be lacking in the content department.
If Feldman is Stoll 2.0, is TechRooster Dev Null 2.0?
Parandian is someone who knows they all don't get it. He's a fellow who 'gets it' himself, but consults for those in the political, non-profit, and corporate realm who very clearly don't (or otherwise they wouldn't need his services, would they?). Even so, on the front lines of things, it's clear that the shift is starting to happen in terms of advertiser and corporate attitudes towards social media and UGC. They might not understand why they need it, but they now know they need it in their strategy somehow.
Given the explosive growth and the extreme prevalence of naysayers with regards to UGC, I can't help but be reminded of Clifford Stoll, who has recently seen a resurgence in notoriety due to an article he wrote in 1995 somehow making the Digg front page. In the Newsweek article that's now making the rounds, Cliff said something that I don't remember him saying (but sounds fairly in-character based on my memories of him):
We’re promised instant catalog shopping—just point and click for great deals. We’ll order airline tickets over the network, make restaurant reservations and negotiate sales contracts. Stores will become obselete [sic]. So how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month? Even if there were a trustworthy way to send money over the Internet — which there isn’t — the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople.
On the one hand, his motivations came from a pure place - he saw a lot of the extravagance, excess and hype going on around the technologies surrounding the Internet, and rightly smelled something rotten there. On the other hand, though, he drew ultimately and epicly wrong conclusions on the future of Internet and commerce.