The rise and fall of UGC?

It was only last year that user-generated content was going to take over the world. Digital content production tools were plummeting in cost and a new generation of producers was discovering that all you needed was a PC and some imagination to run the equivalent of Channel 4 from your bedroom.

But hold on – professional producers don’t appear to be giving up that easily. A new report with the snappy title “Pro Online Video Views 1998–2012” (not a user-generated title there then) points to a rising proportion of content viewed on YouTube being produced in studios not bedrooms.

The report finds that professionally produced online video grew nearly 25% last year, accounting for 41.6 billion views. Separately, the Diffusion Group (TDG) found that in 2008, short and user-generated clips made up almost 60% of video advertising revenues. But TDG analysts predict that figure will have fallen to just 30% by 2013, with 70% of streaming video ad revenues coming from long-form (professionally produced) videos.

Of course there are a number of reasons why we’re suddenly gorging ourselves on professional content: the long tail is suddenly becoming a reality and there’s a lot of stuff that we want now online; broadcasters are dropping micropayments and mostly relying on advertising; and innovations like the iPlayer are meaning there’s a lot more chances to watch stuff that means something to us.

So is this the end for icanhascheezburger.com, exploding mentos and other “highlights” of the UGC era? I doubt it, and I hope not because that’s where real innovation will drive the emergence of Web 3.0. But the quality bar is definitely going up and that can surely only be a good thing.