User Generated Content: State of the Union

In general - this panel wasn't so great. They didn't mention monetization models.

Moderator: Chris Tolles Ceo, TopixDean Mccall   Founder,   IdeaGin 

Stephen Newman   Chief Exec Officer,   Mouth Watering Media 
Todd Morrey  Mosso: The Rackspace Cloud 
Wes Wilson   Pres,   IncSpring (crowd souced brands/ logo)
Chris Tolles   Ceo,   Topix 

Incredible - the first question asked was "what's the twitter hash for this panel?" It was #UGC. 

Why UCG matters: In 1998 only geocities was UGC, now, 3 of top 10 (fox, wiki, facebook)

Good examples now: 

• Wes: YouTube (based on ads), 
• Todd:Twitter (tho no money!). Seems like an auction-like model seems to work - eg. Ebay. 
• Newman: TV - think reality tv, america's funniest home videos. Etsy
• Wilson: Linkedin ($4M in ad revenue), Threadless (people can upload content, and people can buy the crowd-created designs).

?Gracenote - part of itunes for track listing. 

We cheered to beat the room next door. 

Money off the back of the masses? How fair is that?

• As a user, when you're not paying for a service - it's expected.
• But future models will allow users and company to profit. 
• There's more to it than $ - derivative products?
• Facebook Ts&Cs - eg crowdsourcing terms.

How to prevent the riff-raff from destroying site? 

• No programatic way.

Other descriptions for UGC - "community curated works"? No one knows what CCW is!

Slashdot (karma). 

Hierarchical - moderators can nominate other moderators. Wikipedia can see everything that's going. The more transparent, the less easy to game system. 

Craigslist - $100m/ year. $8M on digg in 3 quarters last year. 

Monetization is easier when closer to "the sale". Ie further down the purchase decision cycle. 

Granovetter thresholds mentioned on twitter - on wikipedia

Blog catelogue - bloggers unite - ralley around a topic. 

Not sure what any of this had to do with monetization of UGC.