Any tool intended to facilitate community formation and/or user-generated content must have an eye toward flexible development goals. Youtube may have been created to host a wide variety of video content but if the mass of users slowly shift toward contributing only content on a specific topic Youtube must be willing to tune their own goals for development and growth to suit the purposes that their users hve decided are important. The usage patterns of the majority must trump even the loftiest goal of the tool creator or the tool will be abandoned in favor of one better suited to what users want.

The agility of direction is key to survival in a world where technologies come and go faster than the lastest MTV-driven fashion fads. So rather than marketing to some target demographic, smart UGC companies, ie ones who want to survive the ebb and flow of a fickle user base, must instead market and cater to the users they already have. They, in turn, will utilize the service and become your best advertising. Yes, rather than advertising to new users, I’m suggesting that these companies must instead learn to market to their existing users. But what does a user-driven company look like? How do you function, plan, and grow when your mission statement is simply to continually become whatever your users seem to think you are? Who’s in charge here? more

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In the past week, I have had meetings with prospective and current clients about the need to engage with the self-organized swarms.  Fortunately, we’re holding a special event today entitled “The Power of User-Generated Content”.  If you’re unable to attend, come visit the Google site we’ve created to showcase different collaboration and social media tools that your clients/members/employees are using to talk about you: http://sites.google.com/site/ugcevent/.   

More to follow.

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