Californians say “UGC,” New Yorkers say “CGM”

After a full day at the MIXX advertising event in New York City, Andrew Chen of the Futuristic Play blog comes to the realization that there’s still a huge cultural gap between the East Coast and West Coast when it comes to thinking about Web 2.0. For one, “it actually took a full 3 hours for someone to finally mention Facebook” at the MIXX event in New York. Also, while East Coast executives and West Coast executives agree that “video is hot,” they have a completely different view on what that video should look like: “[New Yorkers] want well-polished content to place their media next to, where they can be sure that it won’t harm the brand.”

Here’s the biggest difference, though: In San Francisco, they refer to “user-generated content” (UGC); in New York, however, they refer to “consumer-generated media” (CGM):

“This one was sort of unexpected – people don’t call things User

Generated Content (aka UGC), they call it Consumer Generated Media

(CGM). In fact, there’s a bunch of people whose titles have CGM in

them. Weird!

I think ultimately, it has to do with the fact that the tech

entrepreneur crowd in SF is mostly focused on creation of new inventory

– they need to convince USERS to come to their site and generate

content, whereas for people who are typically on the advertising site,

they see these people are CONSUMERS. Either way, it’s an interesting

and subtle distinction that shows the differences in perspective.”

The difference is a big one for any business hoping to expand its Web presence: Do you think of your customers as “consumers” or as “users”?

[video: “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off”]