Not a consumer

Mary Hodder has emphasised again her distaste for the "consumer" label.

"We are not creating our own media, writing blogs (Intelliseek owns Blogpulse, a blog search product), in some cases creating our own products, as 'consumers.' We are *users* with a proactive capital U.

Users are people who go out, find stuff they like, publish, remix and create a new. They are smart, they are proactive. They don't take being marketed to, but would rather either discover or get more real information from people they trust. Users have been operating digitally since the advent of the internet.

Consumers are those whose mouths are wide open, pointed toward the sky, so they can't see what's going on, like baby birds, helpless and clueless and waiting to be marketed to, while information or products are spoon-fed to them by marketers. Consumers are so 1980's.

It's Users. Get your ticket now on the cluetrain. If you keep talking about consumers, the users will pass you by as they take control of their own media, product interests and activities."

Kevin Marks thinks it should be neither "consumers" nor "users" but "amateurs"