As I said before, your entire article is built on a false premise. Saying “economic depression could be coming, so let’s theorize how that’ll affect UGC” is exactly like saying “Godzilla could swim to America from Japan, so how will that affect the ozone layer?”

Your premise doesn’t make much sense, and therefore anything that comes after it is irrelevant to those of us who live in the real world. It isn’t that I’m a fanatic when it comes to politics, it is that you’re uninformed when it comes to economics.

There’s not shame in that. I’m uninformed about a great number of things. Instead of calling me a fanatic, perhaps you should research the area with which caused your faux pas in the first place.

What WILL change in my opinion will be the many many for-profit blogs, currently funded by advertising, sponsorships, etc. If/when the economy tanks, it’ll be the marketing dollars that get pulled first — especially the CPM banner and button ads. A crash will force marketers even moreso to ROI-based initiatives.

CGC is being done for-profit, and freely. The for-profit folks will feel the biggest pinch, not the ones already doing it for free.

Whether people spend more or not this holiday season doesn’t mean that they won’t have to budget more carefully next year. At any rate, I didn’t say there will definitely be a consumer crunch. I said some business magazines are predicting it and then wondered what might happen to UGC, given it relies on a certain level of consumer affluence.

Jeff: I agree, Web 2.0 is about empowerment and that won’t go away.

Martin: it wouldn’t be a bad thing if what disappeared was the hype and what’s left is the practice of UGC (an aside: I hate that phrase, user-generated content! In this article however, the “consumer-generated” angle was key).

However, I see UGC more like Tim O’Reilly describes it. Amazon and Google leverage UGC in the form of the information from millions of user generated hyperlinks, search queries and purchasing decisions. Few people realize that blogs, user generated videos and restaurant reviews are but the tip of the UGC-iceberg.

When more and more cellphones are equipped with GPS sensors, these will provide information on presence, as well as on traffic flow - another form of user generated content that requires no effort from the user.

An economic downturn might put a dent in hobby time for some, but for many, creating content, blogging, and submitting ideas to companies via Open Innovation platforms are an integral work/pleasure mix of their lives. UGC can be a great resume builder, a great way to connect with companies seeking talent, and ultimately, the web is one big audition platform. It’s the place where dreams might just come true, and as long as there’s a shot at hitting paydirt, we’ll keep plugging away, even when times are tough.

Your premise is flawed. Data that came out last week not measuring a subjective concept as “consumer confidence” and “planned spending,” but actual holiday spending showed that consumer spending is sharply increased year over year.

As much as the myth of imminent recession and economic collapse continues to be propagated in articles like this, isn’t it interesting how the tech boom keeps on getting bigger and bigger?