User-Generated Content: The "Voice of the Customer" in the 21st Century

It doesn’t take an academic paper to point out the prominence that companies like Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, etc. have had on our popular culture today. Many see it as an efficient communication mechanism (Web 2.0 if you will) in comparison to email and static content postings which now, remarkably only 15 years later after the internet ’launch’, some people see as “old school”. In some sense, Andy Warhol’s prediction of “15 minutes fame” for each and any one of us can now be “self-generated” through our own hard work and user-generated content. Thus, with all of this impact (societally) as backdrop, where does it leave many of us, as academics? The answer, and I hope this essay provides some impetus for that, is not on the sidelines.