New York Times wonders if the Tom Sawyer model for Web 2.0 content creation -
Tom Sawyer got it right. Why paint a fence when you can get your friends to do it for you for free? He would have been the perfect new-media mogul. Spending time and money creating content on the Internet is so hopelessly dated, so dotcom, so very, very 1.0. The secret of today’s successful Web 2.0 companies: build a place that attracts people by encouraging them to create the content — thereby drawing even more people in to create even more stuff.
- is sustainable. It isn’t.
Online video site Magnify already shares ad revenues with users, YouTube is planning to, and everybody else is likely to follow. Web 2.0 businesses looking for free user-generated content will soon see users migrating to their competitors who have implemented a revenue sharing model.