Barriers to UGC adoption

I've been speak ing with a company about a potential UGC site and accompanying marketing campaign. One of the concerns is the potential lack of popularity of the service. They are well aware of the motto from the film Field of Dreams

"if you build it, they will come"

... and that this doesn't work for the web unless you have some mystic force supporting you.

Brian Oberkirch's post on 'Really, We Don’t Want to Join Your Social Network' puts forward the case (and well made it is is) for not building your own Social Network, especially when there's so many of them going up all the time.
With the bar to build a compelling community site rising all the time, its becomming very difficult now to stand-out from the crowd and its all looking a bit 'Me Too' isn't it?.

So has the door shut on this opportunity now?

Edgeworks

Communications were more simple in the old days. You kept information central and owning it was power. Now the distribution of company information (good and bad) is fragmented and increasing in its distribution & velocity.
Its not all about a simplified message via offical channels now a lot of conversation with customers and influencers takes place on the edge of the company. The walled garden is disolving gradually for some companies and

Brian Oberkirch has tackled this subject is some depth in his posting last Spring about 'edgeworks' and it makes for interesing reading:
http://www.brianoberkirch.com/2007/04/30/branding-v-edgework/