Did you know that the first massive user-generated content composition was the Oxford English Dictionary? Yep, that’s right! It was composed solely of contributions aggregated by the public in 1857. To look back throughout the history of UGC in the media however, one would have to go all the way back to 1840 with the first U.S. patent for photography. Because if you think about it, this was when the rise of photography and film began. You can’t have user-generated content without users having access to cameras and although, it won’t become publicly available until much later this was the when the birth of UGC would be. After this, in 1990 there were several electronic bulletin board systems based on UGC, which would then later be converted to websites with the creation of the internet. For example, IMDB, Flickr, and Wikipedia are a few. These sites were basically informational and still images. Later, video content would be publicly popularized with sites such as YouTube in 2005. Also in 2005, BBC set up a UGC content team in response to a London bombing that bolstered “citizen journalism.” A year later in 2006, CNN started a similar campaign called iReport. This was the same year that Time magazine published “Person of the Year: You” that hailed to the rise of user-generated content due to YouTube and other up and coming social media platforms, such as MySpace. This is quite a brief history but it gives an idea on how far user-generated content has come since its inception. Now, we have influencer marketing and customer reviews. Literally, UGC is everywhere. Advertising now harnesses it because it has great ROI for campaigns, higher conversion rates and it builds overall trust between consumers and brands. With the technological advancements happening everywhere, UGC isn’t going anywhere and it’s just getting started. It’s our specialty!
