Serendipity35

Some of those user-content web sites that have been getting buzz the past year are beginning to pay for content. YouTube announced it has plans to pay for content.

Does this mean that the amateur videographer that submits something that goes viral could make some real money? That would be a real shift in how people use social networking sites.

Google Inc. purchased it YouTube last year for $1.65 billion. What did the contributors who made the site get? Nothing.

Well, they knew that when they uploaded their video. Do they have any claim now to their "intellectual property"? (I have to put that in quotes because it is hard to think of a lot of what is on these sites as IP, but it may come down to that.)

Paying individual contributors for content is not so far away from the agreements that Google, Yahoo!, Apple Inc. and others have been setting up with TV networks and movie studios so that they have the right to sell and use original content online.

But the cynic in me doesn't see individuals making money off the content they generate and post online. Then again, Google has set up ways for bloggers to run ads, Amazon lets you be an "associate" and get a very small cut of the sale that comes from your leading customers to them, so perhaps I need to reconsider the business model in my mind.

I did not see it as a good sign when commercials were being produced to go straight to YouTube. The first one I saw was Save the Pants. Not impressed.

Maybe I'm nostalgic for an earlier vision of the Internet and World Wide Web. (Do kids know what www even stands for?)

When Internet2 was created it was partially to get universities and researchers off "Internet1" that was getting clogged and give them more bandwidth. The original Net began to be called the "commodity" Internet. Commodity is commerce.

The promise of Web 2.0 for educators who see it as interactive, read/write, and full of creativity may be in opposition to the O'Reilly version of Web 2.0 which is full of business models. And when the big guns of 2.0 meet again in April, it will be Adobe, eBay, Google, Yahoo! and other corporations who will be running the show.

Do we believe that they will want to grow minds or grow money? Can they co-exist? Can they nurture each other, or will one overwhelm the other?