How to...

What is UGC? 1 The Publisher andConsumer 4What is RSS?6What is Tagging? -social bookmarking9Before you Start -look after your assets & valuables13

This document aims to provide an insight in to UGC looking at how practitioners,companies and organisations can collect/aggregate, filter and display contentuploaded by anyone other than themselves to the Web without having to down-load, edit and re publish.

Aggregate online User GeneratedContent (UGC) for your website

Nov 09

What is UGC?

How to... Aggregate online User Generated Content (UGC) for your website

UGC or User Generated content is just that, media content produced or ‘gener-ated’ by an end-user. Most importantly though is that it is made publicly avail-able on the Web. UGC can take many forms including photographs, video,audio, news articles, blog articles, comments, forum discussions, uploaded files,even tweets, anything resulting in an online asset or object possessing a uniqueURL. (universal resource locator) These resources created during the day to daylife, buzz and activity of your organisation can be tagged, tracked, filtered andaggregated to provide content for your web site or online social space.UGC is often created in response to an existing and often professionally gener-ated item of media, “Professionally generated” referring to the artists creatingand owning the IP (intellectual property) and possessive copyright on the origi-nating material.UGC can be as simple as a single photo taken at an event or a PDF documentcreated of a seasonal brochure. More complex UGC takes existing images, au-dio and video, combining it with home/user captured media and collected linksfrom around the web. This is then uploaded to a website to be freely accessibleto anyone interested in looking, watching, listening and commenting.The most popular UGC sites are:

•YouTubeforvideosharing

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=YouTube&oldid=327909915

•Flickrforpicturesharing

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Flickr&oldid=326710624

Where is it found?

Author: Caron Lyon, www.pcmcreative.co.uk

How to...

What is UGC? 1 The Publisher andConsumer 4What is RSS?6What is Tagging? -social bookmarking9Before you Start -look after your assets & valuables13

•Deliciousforbookmarksharing

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Delicious_%28website%29&oldid=321760253•Issuuforpublishedprintsharinghttp://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Issuu&oldid=320617538•Slideshareforslideshowpresentations

http://www.slideshare.net/about

•Scribdfordocumentsharinghttp://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Scribd&oldid=326052341Somewebsitesincorporatefacilitiestoenableuserstouploadoraddusergen

-erated content directly to the site itself. Blog comments are a simple example of

this.SitesliketheBBCtakeadvantageofUGCbyaskinguserstouploadphotos

of the weather to be shown with the weather reports for example.

Aggregate online User GeneratedContent (UGC) for your website

Nov 09

Author: Caron Lyon, www.pcmcreative.co.ukHow to... Aggregate online User Generated Content (UGC) for your website

The short answer is absolutely everyone who uploads anything to the Internet.As a creative organisation, business or practitioner the question really of inter-est is “Who is making content about me?” and following on from that “How can Imake use of it?”

Who is making it?

Donna attends a workshop where she learns felt making techniques at her local arts centre. During theworkshop she takes photos of her progress. That evening she uploads her pictures to Flickr and writes onher blog about the inspiring day she had.Martin is a member of the art centre’s youth theatre program. During rehearsals he and other members of the company take photos on their mobile phones and shoot bits of video. During the performances photosfrom backstage get snapped. Before leaving on the last night he sneaks in to the foyer and takes down ashow poster as a souvenir along with promotional cards still stacked on the ticket counter. A good time washad by all. Martin likes to make videos and takes all his content and makes a short video to share with the

restofthecasttocommemoratetheirtimetogether.Theresulting4minvideoisuploadedtoYouTube.

Simple scenarios - UGC who makes it and who might use it?

How to...

What is UGC? 1 The Publisher andConsumer 4What is RSS?6What is Tagging? -social bookmarking9Before you Start -look after your assets & valuables13

Tina works as the marketing officer for a mid-scale rural touring company in theMidlands. Local papers often review the company’s productions, print storiesand announce upcoming shows. Collecting together all these press mentionsis part of her job. It can be time consuming and often only results in the storiesgenerated by press releases issue by her. Tina relies on eager-eyed friends of the company sending links to her or cutting the articles from the papers andsending them to her. If only she could be notified every time a mention of hercompany appeared anywhere on the web.Raymond owns a printing business and one of his clients is PCM stage produc-tions. Each season a new brochure is printed to promote the company’s activi-

ties.TheyalsohavepostersofvarioussizesandA5flyersforeveryproduction.

All of the printed materials are stored in PDF format. The Arts Today regionalculture magazine is also a client.Rosie is organising the work’s company outing, Pantomime at the Theatre Royal,it’s become an annual affair. A few days before Rosie is updating her Twitter

Aggregate online User GeneratedContent (UGC) for your website

Nov 09

Author: Caron Lyon, www.pcmcreative.co.ukHow to... Aggregate online User Generated Content (UGC) for your website

IsWeb2.0AbandoningtheUGCShip?http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/06/is-web-20-abandoning-the-ugc-ship/

Does user-generated content have a future?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2009/mar/14/sxswi-web20

UK: User-generated content gets sticky

http://globaltechforum.eiu.com/index.asp?layout=rich_story&doc_id=9461

User generated content becomes a hit in UK

http://econsultancy.com/blog/238-user-generated-content-becomes-a-hit-in-uk

Links to articles

“I’mofftoTheatreRoyalpantoatw/e.Soooexcited.1spareticket.DMmeifyouwanttocome.”Several

followers tweet back, “Plz...last years was a hoot. cheers” from one “Oh no your not!” from several others!On the bus and whilst waiting to get to their seats Rosie takes some photos for the company’s internalnewsletter... programs in hand posed for the camera. Others take pictures on mobile phones sendingthem directly to Facebook or plan to upload them to flickr.