Personally I use social media a lot and I have experienced user-generated content on just about all of it. I use Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and LinkedIn; of those LinkedIn is the only on I do not use heavily.
I do not use Pinterest AT ALL! Freshman year of college I really learned what Pinterest was how all of my friends would waste hour pinning useless crap that they would never do or use and I had enough things that wasted my time, I didn’t need another—which relates to the question “where do people find the time” in the Cognitive Surplus reading. I like the idea of Pinterest but I find it kind of stupid. I digress. Some websites I uses that aren’t really social media but have still experienced user-generated content are Google, Slacker Radio, and many other websites with advertisements posted on the side. I have noticed there is a difference between generally websites and social media sites in the user-generated content. Sometimes when I do online shopping or searches for certain products I notice that those products pop up as ads on other sites. For example in my oral communications class I gave a persuasive speech on why you should not to anti-bacterial hand soap because it aids in the creation on super bugs. I Googled Soft Soap hand soap because they have non-anti-bacterial hand soaps and I need more information on the product. The next day when I was listening to slacker radio and a picture of the soap was in the margins as an advisement. Also, three weeks ago I was buying shoes online at payless and a few days later I was reading some random article and a picture of the shoes I was looking at was at the bottom of the page.
Social media is a whole other ball game. The number one culprit of user-generated content is Facebook, they have fine-tuned some type of super algorithm that just blows my mind! Fb suggests friend based on friends we have in common, it also suggests people that go to the same schools as you do or work at the same place. I suggests pages to ‘like’ based on my pervious ‘likes,’ 
if a friend ‘liked’ it, or other people who are not in common with me but ‘liked’ the same set of pages. It also notifies me of close friends or family member’s birthdays and it determines whether or not to notify my based on the amount of interaction I have had with that person. No of that really bothers me but the one thing that is getting on my nerves is that my newsfeed is 50% one of my friends post. She just recently had an adorable baby and I ‘like’ just about all the pictures she puts up of him so Fb decided to make my newsfeed filled with her statuses and updates. I find this annoying because it doesn’t even give me a chance to look at my other friend’s posts as much.
The second social media outlet that I get a lot of user-generated content on is twitter. Twitter suggest people for me to follow based on a lot of the same stuff Facebook does. One think that has been happening more recently (probably with a new update) is I have been getting little notifications 
at the top of my phone saying @user and @user2 are talking about this, or @user, @user2 and 3 other of your followers have retweeted this. If I click that notification it will take me to twitter and show me that some of my followers are doing retweeting to see if I might want to retweet it.
Over all I find some of the user-generated content helpful and convenient but on some levels it really creeps me out once I start to think about it too hard. My last example for user-generated content doesn’t have to do with the internet but I think you will find it interesting and freaky all in one swoop. I was taking a Business Ethics class last year with Dr. Kline and he gave an example in class of how Target monitors recent purchases by individuals and noticed that this girl was making similar purchases to pregnant women so they started to send her baby related ads, well this girl was still in high school and her parents of the advertisements. Turns out the girl didn’t know she was pregnant yet and Target ousted her to her parents!
Jazzyfreshhh 
I agree with a lot that you have written about. I too notice that I can Google search a topic one day and the next time I am on the web I see advertisements for that product on almost every page. It really tracks how I use the internet and what I use the internet for. I also feel like Facebook has really gone almost too far with only showing friends that I have liked their statuses or pictures because it takes away the “social” aspect of the website.
I also had a similar experience with the Google Search police… I cracked the screen on my iPad, so I was looking at how to repair it myself, places to buy replacement glass, etc. (i was using my wife’s iPad). The next day she gets a Groupon coupon for iPad Glass replacement. Coincidence? I think not. But it did work out for me, as I was able to get a pretty good deal on the replacement.
My concern is how much is too much? And if Google has that ability, yet the IRS supposedly can’t keep track of internal emails, should we hire Google to collect our taxes? I would bet we would have a lot less money falling between the cracks, that’s for sure….
I remember I found out about the ads being creepy like back when I was 20. (8 years ago) I was planning a trip to San Diego and looking up tickets, then boom at the side of my screen were the “best deals” for tickets to San Diego. I thought it was so awesome, then I realized they were just spying on my activity. I felt like a nerd! Coincidence is a euphemism for conspiracy! ha!
I agree with the points you made about Google searches, Facebook and Twitter. It is somewhat creepy that the internet remembers our searches and constantly re-advertises them. I can definitely relate to your Facebook issue as I have the same problem. I rarely use Facebook but when I do, I may like a picture or status that a friend posts and the next thing I know, all I see is that one person in my News Feed.
Good points made, especially about Google searches and that type of thing. It is a little eerie that we can enter something into a search engine or anything similar to that and then those search engines just remember exactly what we search. Nice post!
I liked your post. I do have Pinterest, but agree that spending hours pinning things that you will never do is pointless. That is why I only go on there when I have a specific project that I have to get done. Otherwise I would get sucked into looking at and pinning all of these awesome ideas that I know I would only even do a small fraction of them.
i also liked all your comments about how Facebook, Twitter, Google, and even stores like Target all use our habits to predict what they think we will want to know. I agree that it can be both annoying and convenient, and also a little scary all at the same time, but I think it is just going to keep advancing and get even scarier how accurate they will be able to predict our actions in the future.
It is interesting that you brought up Pintrest in your discussion. My wife is a huge fan and I can usually find her on there a couple times a week. The only thing I don’t understand about it is that nothing on there is original. Everything is posts and reposts of something that others have done. It seems to me that people today are more interested in reading about the neat and interesting ideas rather than forming them for themselves.