From its origins as a niche activity driven by long-tail distribution (Daugherty, Eastin, and Bright, 2008), early UGC was
characterized by participatory inequality whereby creation used took place among the few (Ochoa and Duval, 2008). In the
communication democracy that the Internet is empowering more and more, however, all kinds of consumers express their views publicly; influence has been shifting from manager-generated content toward key opinion leaders in the customer base for many years, furthering the shift from a conventional publisher-centric media model to a more user-centric model.