unCGM

Last fall I annoyed some people by taking a potshot at the moniker CGM — consumer generated media — which I think fails miserably to capture the spirit the online revolution.

So I’m thrilled to hear some new voices in the anti-CGM choir. Brad Berens writes that the idea of “consumer gererated content” is a terrible name for the fan ads people are creating about various products.

Tom Hespos chimes in that

“User” is better than “consumer,” but only marginally so. While “user” doesn’t necessarily have that nasty connotation that comes from corporations seeing their customers as mere consumers of product. But it does do something that “consumer” also did, which is to draw an artificial line of distinction between “ordinary folks” (as Brad termed them in his article) and what we’ve traditionally thought of as professional content producers.