Consumer Generated Media describes a variety of new and emerging sources of online information that are created, initiated, circulated and used by consumers intent on educating each other on products, services, brands, personalities and issues.
– Neilson Buzz matrices.
Pete Blackshaw, CMO for Nielsen Buzzmetrics, coined the term “consumer generated media” (CGM) to describe the evolving consumer-created space on the internet. CGM refers to posts made by consumers within online venues such as internet forums, blogs, wikis, and discussion lists, on products that they have purchased, questions they have or problems they are trying to solve. CGM is constantly evolving in terms of form and content. A few prominent websites used for CGM include: Brickfish, Dailymotion, Digg, eBay, Facebook, Flickr, MySpace, Picasa, Revver, Second Life, TripAdvisor, TypePad, Wikipedia, WordPress, YouTube, bigadda
The most common consumer hangouts in the CGM spaces are: Discussion boards, Blogs, Wikis, Social networking sites, News Sites, Trip planners, Mobile Photos sharing sites, Videos sharing sites, Customer review sites, Experience or photo sharing sites. The CGM supporting sites can be divided into five different categories for better understanding. They are,
Blogs: A Blog is the collection of web log where publisher shares his stories, fantasies or experiences. The wordpress, blogger, bigadda are the famus platforms which offer blogging experience.
Message Boards or Discussion Forums: Interest-focused message forums and discussion boards like citehr, are the most prominent content sharing tool. This concept was evolved from the Tech World where techies discuss their problems and experts offer advice to the fellow techies. Now this concept has become common across verticals.
Review Sites: This is a popular place where an excited customer spread positive word and an irate customer vents his frustration. Mouthshut is one of the famous review site.
Groups: These are highly focused and specialized groups or communities where the members exchange ideas in the virtual world. These clubs are an offshoot of the Mail groups where one can connect with their friends through group mails like Yahoo, Google offers platform to create groups.
Communities: Communities like Orkut, facebook, you tube, Flicker, linkedin offer networking and socializing opportunities to the Internet savvy individuals. Started as a socializing tool, these communities grew as an influential media for marketers.
The idea of CGM has evolved from its early roots of consumer feedback via online letters and email to encompass new media such as video, pictures and social networking sites. The phenomenon, CGM is a nightmare as well as an opportunity for marketers. It is a nightmare since the marketer has no control over the media or the message, an opportunity because if used wisely, it can turn out to be a new medium and an invaluable source of customer information.
