“ We misinterpret these seemingly inane posts, because we’re so unused to seeing material in public that isn’t for the public. The people posting messages to one another, on social networking services and weblogs and media sharing sites, are creating a different kind of material, and doing a different kind of communicating, than the publishers of newspapers and magazines are. Most user-generated material is actually personal communication in a public forum. Because of this personal address , it makes no more sense to label this content than it would to call a phone call with your mother “family-generated content.
The Penguin Blog: Special Guest Post - Why User-generated Content Mostly Isn’t