User-generated Content News & Articles

User-generated content is a rapidly developing revolution in media. News media have been implementing user generated content in an effort to supplement content and community perspectives.

Citizen journalists now wield power over online content and new business models are emerging in response to this shift. To help bring together content-trendsetters and business leaders in a variety of fields, Mediabistro presents User-Generated Content Conference and Expo.

What do you do after signing big agreements with the likes of UK-based Guinness World Records and Endemol UK? Why you open an office in Europe to service those major clients and a few more. At least that’s what social media platform provider KickApps is doing.

Forget the wisdom of the crowd. Forget CNN’s user-generated news module. Forget thinking that you — the humble reader, amateur, voyeur and all-around user of average intelligence — know anything at all. Move aside, the experts are taking back their domain.

Since the dawn of new media, which has so-far allowed mere mortals to upload their musings and broadcast it to just about anyone everywhere, experts have been wringing their hands in frustration, contempt and dismay. Don’t their advanced degrees, decades of schooling and cozy, corner offices mean anything anymore, they whined.

Let’s conclude 2007 with a pleasant tale: Nirvanix gleans investment capital from Intel! Hurrah!

With the monies from its new Tier 1 investor, Nirvanix plans to further the conquests of its storage delivery network, which recently took on the chimerical challenges of college funding and rich media (talk about pressure!).

But onto the new. Fresh financing “enables us to build-out the world-wide network to meet growing demand,” said CEO Patrick Harr.

(Let’s hope some of that funding is used to help pump up the benefits for existing clients, too.)

Nirvanix currently purveys hosted storage services, focusing specifically on the storage issues incurred by digital media and user-generated content.

Its storage delivery network is powered by the Internet Media File System (patent pending).

The above claim is gleaned from Wave II of the IT Social Media Index put together by, go figure, ITtoolbox (an IT-oriented social networking site) and PJA Advertising + Marketing.

Read a quick synopsis of what they’ve got to say before calling BS.

We all need to hear what the contrarians to enterprise optimism have to say every once in awhile. Column Two shook us all awake with a post about what content management systems provide in the user-generated space. The answer: Not much.

CT perceives a number of architectural challenges for CMS product developers in dealing with user-generated content, not the least of which include, how should user-generated content be captured in the first place? What happens to this content in the CMS repository, and how should site administrators deal with the influx of gad-knows-what coming from the user end?

One final blow in the direction of the self-delusional “exempt”: If you think blogs and wikis make for sufficient web two-dot-oh participation, “you’ve got a lot to learn,” says CT. Ouch.