User Generated Pointlessness

I know the whole idea of “user generated content” is vastly divisive. Some people see it as a great idea, some as a patronising view of people in general and others as an embarrassing attempt by brands to cash in on new Web 2.0 technologies.But some examples strike me as completely pointless. Take this example (in the image) that I stumbled across while doing some phone research for my sister-in-law. Apparently Nokia are offering me the chance to use some videos (isn’t “our” and “user-generated” a contradiction in terms?) to make…our own advert.

Which begs the question: “why?”. What possible user benefit is there in doing this? This just reeks of someone in marketing saying “that YouTube is cool, let’s do something like that”. It makes me cringe, just looking at it.

No, I didn’t click through to find out more. It just didn’t seem worth it.