Consumer-generated Media and Sex
Henry Copeland of BlogAds goes ballistic on those who call blogs consumer generated media:
Calling blogs consumer-generated media is like calling sex the "clothless generation of heat, musk and mucus." The essential excitement and motivation just doesn’t come through, does it?
He certainly gets wound up on the subject. And he has a point — I don’t consider blogs to be necessarily consumer content. Some are, many aren’t. To me, consumer generated media is created on sites like Amazon or TripAdvisor. A site created for the purpose of publishing an individual’s views (for example, a blog) almost by definition steps up above the pure consumer level. Taking those steps may make you an amateur journalist or author, but certainly more than a simple consumer.
Posting a review on an e-commerce site, on the other hand, seems precisely what most people think of when talking about consumer-generated media.