Digital Frontiers

Hey guys,

Jeff Goetz here. I’m going to have to keep it short to today as I am overloaded with coursework.

Below you will see the instructions for this week’s blog post:

instructions.png

I have included this image of the instructions because I wanted to display user generated content (UGC) to the students of this course.  I hope that this content is useful to you by giving you a quicker route to the directions, thus saving you,more or less, 15 seconds. Posting this picture is also beneficial to me, as the “picture and creativity” is a requirement for this post. I would also benefit if you consistently return to this page to view the instructions, thus increasing my popularity count.

To summarize what I wrote above, the major con of UGC is that it most always creates a win-win situation for the users involved. So there’s a pro, but what  about a con?

One con I’ve found is that in some situations of UGC, the users who contributes the content aren’t actually any better off. Some users may feel like they truly made a difference or that they gained something from their efforts; but I believe this is just cognitive dissonance. For example, am I really learning something from writing this post? does my popularity percentage actually increase my happiness in real life? These are good questions.

Now, for my discussion on the use of Facebook and Twitter to drive business, I will link to the case studies I wrote about two weeks ago.  In my analysis, I wrote about what I thought was a successful discussion board on the Burrito Brothers Facebook fan page. According to the suggestions by the F&B Consulting fan page, the Burrito Brothers fan page still needs a lot of work. It’s got great discussion, but without some user generated images, it is behind the competition.

…and now, back to my all-nighter.

Popularity: 1% [?]