Braj Mohan Chaturvedi: 08/01/08

Consumer Generated Media describes a variety of new and emerging sources of online information that are created, initiated, circulated and used by consumers intent on educating each other on products, services, brands, personalities and issues.

-- Neilson Buzz matrices.

Pete Blackshaw, CMO for Nielsen Buzzmetrics, coined the term "consumer generated media" (CGM) to describe the evolving consumer-created space on the internet. CGM refers to posts made by consumers within online venues such as internet forums, blogs, wikis, and discussion lists, on products that they have purchased, questions they have or problems they are trying to solve. CGM is constantly evolving in terms of form and content. A few prominent websites used for CGM include: Brickfish, Dailymotion, Digg, eBay, Facebook, Flickr, MySpace, Picasa, Revver, Second Life, TripAdvisor, TypePad, Wikipedia, WordPress, YouTube, bigadda

The most common consumer hangouts in the CGM spaces are: Discussion boards, Blogs, Wikis, Social networking sites, News Sites, Trip planners, Mobile Photos sharing sites, Videos sharing sites, Customer review sites, Experience or photo sharing sites. The CGM supporting sites can be divided into five different categories for better understanding. They are,

Blogs: A Blog is the collection of web log where publisher shares his stories, fantasies or experiences. The wordpress, blogger, bigadda are the famus platforms which offer blogging experience.

Message Boards or Discussion Forums: Interest-focused message forums and discussion boards like citehr, are the most prominent content sharing tool. This concept was evolved from the Tech World where techies discuss their problems and experts offer advice to the fellow techies. Now this concept has become common across verticals.

Review Sites: This is a popular place where an excited customer spread positive word and an irate customer vents his frustration. Mouthshut is one of the famous review site.

Groups: These are highly focused and specialized groups or communities where the members exchange ideas in the virtual world. These clubs are an offshoot of the Mail groups where one can connect with their friends through group mails like Yahoo, Google offers platform to create groups.

Communities: Communities like Orkut, facebook, you tube, Flicker, linkedin offer networking and socializing opportunities to the Internet savvy individuals. Started as a socializing tool, these communities grew as an influential media for marketers.

The idea of CGM has evolved from its early roots of consumer feedback via online letters and email to encompass new media such as video, pictures and social networking sites. The phenomenon, CGM is a nightmare as well as an opportunity for marketers. It is a nightmare since the marketer has no control over the media or the message, an opportunity because if used wisely, it can turn out to be a new medium and an invaluable source of customer information.

Katyayana

This Blog is dedicated to all the Management Professionals who want to challenge the set pattern, who are practical in their approach and dont think in thin air; who believe that strategy is all about making things simple; who strongly advocate the “Rule of Simple” and who believe that impossible is nothing. - Just like Katyayana. Katyayana was a disciple of Gautama Buddha. He is also known as Kaccana or Kaccayana, Mahakatyayana, Mahakaccana and in Japanese as Kasennen. Katyayana is one of the “Ten Disciples of the Buddha”. Mahakashyapa, Ananda, Shariputra, Subhuti, Purna, Mahamaudgalyayana, Katyayana, Aniruddha, Upali and Rahula. He was foremost in explaining Dharma. He was born in a brahmin family at Ujjayini (Ujjain) and received a classical Brahminical education studying the Vedas. Katyayana was a Sanskrit grammarian, mathematician and Vedic priest who lived in ancient India, around the time of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom. He is known for two works:- The Varttika, an elaboration on Panini’s grammar. Along with the Maha-bhasya of Patanjali, this text became a core part of the vyakarana (grammar) canon. This was one of the six Vedangas, and constituted compulsory education for Brahman students in the following twelve centuries.- He also composed one of the later Sulba Sutras, a series of nine texts on the geometry of altar constructions, dealing with rectangles, right-sided triangles, rhombuses, etc. Katyayana certainly have been a man of very considerable learning but probably not interested in mathematics for its own sake, merely interested in using it for religious purposes.He wrote the Sulbasutra to provide rules for religious rites and to improve and expand on the rules which had been given by his predecessors. Katyayana would have been a priest instructing the people in the ways of conducting the religious rites he describes. Authorship: Nettipakarana, a work of grammar, and Petakopadesa, a treatise on exegetical methodology, sulvasutras dealt with geometry.