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User Generated Content

　　Blogs, web forum posts, and YouTube videos are all examples of User-generated content. Website content includes written text, videos, music, photos, or any other type of information that can be placed on a website. If content is user-generated, that means that the end users (the website visitors) are creating the content, rather than relying on paid professional writers, film makers, photographers, professional musicians, etc. User-generated content (UGC), also known as Consumer generated media (CGM) or user-created content (UCC), refers to various kinds of media content, publicly available, that are produced by end-users.

　　The advantage of User-generated content is that it allows website visitors to voice their opinions, become part of a discussion, provide free website content to websites, and gives a chance for amateur film makers, musicians, writers, bloggers, photographers, and artists to exhibit and show their work and ideas with others. User-generated content allows participating website visitors to feel a sort of ownership in a website and to make a contribution.

　　The disadvantages of User-generated content are that the information may not be accurate, it may not be particularly informative, and it may contain language or images that do not support the goal of the website owners. If you open up a forum or discussion group on your website, you are bound to get some dissenters and complainers who will try and ruin a company's reputation or swear roundly for entire paragraphs in an effort to get their point across. However, user generated content provides a level of diversity and fresh, reality-TV-like honesty that is difficult to achieve with more professional, formalized content.

　　The term user generated content entered mainstream usage during 2005 having arisen in web publishing and new media content production circles. Its use for a wide range of applications, including problem processing, news, gossip and research, reflects the expansion of media production through new technologies that are accessible and affordable to the general public. All digital media technologies are included, such as question-answer databases, digital video, blogging, podcasting, mobile phone photography and wikis. In addition to these technologies, user generated content may also employ a combination of open source, free software, and flexible licensing or related agreements to further reduce the barriers to collaboration, skill-building and discovery.