Tongue Trip

Services based on user-generated content can, I think, be grouped into three categories:

1) The selfish service, as described by Josh Porter. People generate content because it’s useful to them (i.e., del.icio.us, flickr, myspace). This is the predominant template.

2) The unselfish service - people generate content out of a pure sharing impulse. Wikipidea works on this principle. This structure only works if there is a truly massive user base. The ratio of contributors to read-only users of Wikipidea is, I would bet, well below one percent.

3) The nakedly selfish service - people generate content to promote their personal brand or to earn money (Squidoo). [I'm not entirely happy with this title - Squidoo, for example, has a large charitable comoponent, and many, if not most, people contribute out of an impulse to simply create something fun and share their knowledge. Still, the structure does provide content generators with a monetary incentive.]

In the end, all three can work, and all are vulnerable in different ways to splog(?) abuse [Note - I think we need a new term for user-generated content abuse - slug?].

(repost from a comment left on Pete Cashmore’s blog)