ClappingTree’s Web 2.0

The marketing perspective of social networking on the Web:

According to Nielsen BuzzMetrics, Consumer-Generated Media (CGM) encompasses the millions of consumer-generated comments, opinions and personal experiences posted in publicly available online sources (such as blogs, message boards, forums, Usenet newsgroups, discussions and forums on large email portals, online opinion/review sites and online feedback/complaint sites) on a wide range of issues, topics, products and brands, using media such as photos, images, videos, even podcasts and webcasts… and who knows what’s next? In other words, “CGM is also referred to as Online Consumer Word-of-Mouth or Online Consumer Buzz.”

Why is CGM important?

First, consumers place far more trust in their fellow consumers than they do in traditional marketers and advertisers, according to research… Secondly, CGM is prolific and increasingly easy and inexpensive to create… [Finally,] because CGM data is easy to find on search engines, marketers and advertisers no longer “control” the message or the medium.

Athabasca University, often called the “Open University of Canada” (with 32,000 students worldwide), has moved to Moodle for its online course provision.

Moodle is a software package for producing internet-based courses and websites. It is open source software, which means that it has no licensing costs and is available for modification by users and developers. It offers students easy access to course content and online resources such as the library, digital reading rooms, and forums for online discussions between instructors and students.

“Moodle’s great strength is that it provides all the functionality and features of sophisticated, expensive, learning management systems, but it has a user-friendly, intuitive interface that requires only a gentle learning curve,” says Dr. Derek Briton, a member of the Moodle evaluation committee. “Also, student reviews of Moodle are exceedingly positive, and for a University that is student-focused, that is important.”

For more information see the Athabasca press release dated March 31, 2006. (Note: Not news anymore, but just for the record in my space.)