Thoughts, Ideas, Opinions ... » What if “C” in UGC stands for “Communities”, not for “Content” anymore ?

As you may have seen already, we just released Webjam Branded Services, allowing any brand or organisation to let their audience, members or clients create their own social networks within their branded environment.

We indeed believe that the area of simple member profiles within huge communities is going to fade away, being replaced by smaller networks organised around a purpose. Web2.0 is supposedly about “user generated content” but the market, from users to organisations & brands is going start thinking “user generated communities”. Here is why and what that implies :

• Marketing-wise, we are going beyond advertising and pages you can just befriend on social networks, to really engage and empower the audience : by letting users run their own community sites within their environment, they can spread the word about your product or as importantly the values you stand for. Whether you are Yamaha Music engaging with musicians as is already the case on their Webjam, or Greenpeace providing easy-to-use templates to let volunteers quickly react and build buzz around an event, you are going beyond a product or a mission by letting people act with you and/or on your behalf.
• Functionality-wise, we are going to move away from people profile and mini-feeds to start thinking at the community level : in Webjam Channels, as you can also see in our our own editorial Channels, the profile and the activity feed are first and foremost at the community level. It is about connecting networks, whether they are local mother groups, charities or sport clubs as they have experiences to share as groups, not just at the individual level.
• Software wise, if UGC now stands for User Generated Communities, then CMS as “Content Management system” needs to give way to CMS as “Community Management System”. Content is of course a must have, but it is how people use it or collaborate on it, with whom and in which context for which goals that is really the most important.
• Business-wise, whereas a solution like Webjam Branded Services is indeed a Software as a Service – SaaS – (see on wikipedia) offering, we actually see us providing organisations with Marketing as a Service – MaaS -  (which we just made up…). And yes we do aim to nurture and develop this “category” which represents the future of how brands, organisations and people will interact responsibly.

Beyond the big milestone for Webjam today as we crystallise this vision in our B2B2C product offering, it is very exciting for all of us here not only to be part of this behavioural and market shift, but also play a defining role in shaping it.