User-Created content leads to (actual) social networking at NAIAS

I just got back from the North American International Auto Show in Detroit where user-created content and social networking were all the rage. Instead of the typical show-and-tell you expect to get from the big brands, this year’s event was much more about those same brands asking visitors to show-and-tell THEM. The standout example was by Ford.
All of the cars were placed inside a giant ellipse of video screens:

At the center was a platform holding 3 large touch screens:

surrounded by smaller touch-screen kiosks:

Visitors were encouraged to step up to a small kiosk, take a picture of themselves, and then input comments about cars, life, anything (note the disclaimer):

These comments and photos were uploaded to the master screen in the center. Meanwhile, Ford had people out on the streets of Detroit doing impromptu interviews of passersby and uploading these clips to the same master screen. Other visitors were texting and bluetoothing content in from all over the show. On the master screen, there was a video timeline (much like iMovie) where you could walk up, look through the giant bin of user-created images and text files, and drag them onto a timeline:

which automatically synced it up to music and projected it 360˚ on the ellipse for all of the visitors to see:

It was interesting to see what was on people’s minds at the auto show – everything from opinions on concept cars to provocative statements about fuel efficiency and renewable energy options in a big, user-created audio/video mashup. I was surprised by how attractive and cohesive the final result was, and how much buzz it generated around the show. I watched as 2 groups of people on the show floor recognized each other from the video and started a conversation. They were complete strangers. The user-created content acted as a conduit to a live, real-time, self-organizing social networking situation.

What can we learn from this experience about the relevance of user-created content? Is there any applicability here to the world of learning?