CGM: What is it worth?

This is the last panel of the conference. I'm a bit tired, I have to admit, but I do think this is an important discussion.

Q: How mainstream is consumer-generated media (CGM)?

Ron Bloom (Pod Show) says: in 5 years, 50% of all media consumed will be generated by other consumers. Users don't have to generate content, they just need to be able to engage with it. The television model is not what the audience is born with anymore, and in that sense this has become mainstream.

Q: People are creating a brand. Is their a value there?
Mary Hodder (Dabble) says people are making money because of their blog etc.The content itself is not what has the direct $$ value. Attribution and reputation ("the brand of me as an authority about someting") are important. It's because of user-generated content that we can make money. It's not with user-generated content that we will be making money.

Q: Traditional media is keeping a watchful eye on this, why is this? Is it out of fear?
Steven Starr (Revver) says the reason they are watchful is because of the 60% statistic that Tony Perkins stated at the opening of this conference.

Ron Bloom - Hollywood is built on a reporting and licensing system. Podsafe music is changing the old system.

Cynthia says that regarding mashup/replay artists, there's now a many to many model (rather than one to many model).

Steven Starr (Revver) says that new licenses need to be developed to memorialize the creative theft that is taking place.

Warning about rating systems -- Mary Hodder, one person's thumbs up is another's thumbs down. One person's 1 star is another person's 5 star. This is all about digital social gestures. We need to have better analysis of these social gestures on line. (E.g., Google uses one gesture (a link) that is really easy to game.) The meta data around the video content needs to be taken very seriously.

Bloom says that passionate people speak passionately about things they consume. If the cotent sucks, word will get out the content sucks. The creators will get the feedback, and will create new content and make it better. The subtext of what is being enabled is the voice of the consumers.

Q: What are the business models that will thrive, but also encourage creative artistry.
Mika of Atom Entertainment says that it depends if we're talking about video, blogs, text, etc. People put their hat on advertising for the money right now. The issue there is that it's not so hard to get to $1-3 million in ad revenue, but getting to $50-100 million in revenue is very very hard. [This sounds like a scaling problem to me.]

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