Most user-generated content is created as communication in small groups, but since we’re so unused to communications media and broadcast media being mixed together, we think that everyone is now broadcasting. This is a mistake. If we listened in on other people’s phone calls, we’d know to expect small talk, inside jokes, and the like, but people’s phone calls aren’t out in the open. One of the driving forces behind much user-generated content is that conversation is no longer limited to social cul-de-sacs like the phone.
Clay Shirky (via azspot)
This is actually something we’ve always acknowledged at Vimeo. We even had an awkwardly-worded tag line for a while, “not everyone should see everything,” that was meant to convey the closed nature of some interactions on the site. I like how Clay has expressed the ideas here.
7 months ago