"User Generated Content" or "Stuff I Put Online For My Friends to Look At"

Adweek has a story this week entitled "User-Gen Space Poised for Growth."

I saw the headline and though "hmm, someone's really going to try and make money with silly videos kids make themselves."

But then I actually read the article and find out that what Adweek called "User Generated Content" is actually what the rest of us call "stuff I put up online for my friends to look at."

Because the stuff Adweek is calling UGC is "social networking, photo sharing and amateur video." Yup. Flickr, MySpace, Facebook and YouTube. And like I've said before, most 16 year olds have some sort of social networking page. Maybe even more than one. But for 99.99% of them, that site is something they share with their friends, not someplace they want to meet an advertiser. Ditto Flickr, PhotoBucket and, to a lesser extent, YouTube.

Because, to beat that dead horse, Your Brand Is Not My Friend.