New Year New Media and New Trends?

The web is full of end of year summarizes and predictions for 2007. Time’s selection of You as the person of the year has been covered extensively as the idea of user generated content seems to have taken over day to day conversations (do conversations about UGC also count as UGC?) .

Is UGC over hyped? What can we expect for 2007?

I think that the term might have been over hyped recently but not the reality behind it. People connect with other people, we spend most of our life talking with other people, arguing, and sharing our opinions with the people we know. This has been true from the beginning of time. Technology has enables our circle of friends to grow and created better opportunities for us to reach out and find some other person that has an opinion we care to hear or share our own opinion with more people then we could ever imagine.

I believe that when people write a blog they don’t think of a number of people that will read it but rather about how they would present the point in a discussion with a friend, or possibly a stranger they strike up a conversation on a plan on train ride. That is what makes UGC so interesting for the majority of us, we feel the human contact. It is not a crafted message created by a spokesperson, PR maverick or bureaucrat but rather represents the most basic way of communication we all feel so comfortable with.

With more and more of the media becoming alienated we have an inherent desire for the simple conversation that UGC can offer. A feeling that we can get to know the writer, they are just another person and not the mouth piece of some unknown media organization. This is a simple truth that is part of our human experience and will continue to grow the amount and popularity of UGC.

At Sportingo we are offering a platform to deal with one aspect of UGC which is fans passion for sports. The amount of articles on our site continues to grow at a brisk pace and we are already working on next versions of the site that will include more media and even better ways for fans and writers to share their thoughts.

The notion that if you build it they will come is proving itself as more and more people find their way to Sportingo and many other UGC sites share their thoughts with a growing global audience.