There are so many users creating all this content, willing and freely. Often the motivations for the produser go far beyond monetary concerns. It seems to me that there could be some long term winners and losers of the rise in quality user lead content, and it may not always be the content creators. Bruns describes the Produsage Environment as being made up of people who participate in the process the following ways:
- content development space to foster produsage, such as MySpace, Wikipedia and Google
- contribution to intellectual property, by public domain or commercial sources
- users who harness the power of user generated content for commercial purposes
- commercial or non-profit groups who harvest the user-generated content for their own purposes
- commercial or non-profit groups who provide services to support content development
(Bruns, p. 5).
Although the line between producer and consumer is now blurred the financial benefits have not necessarily been redistributed accordingly. Every time I post a photo on my, very popular, Facebook page I am adding to the value of Facebook. They have given me the use of their content development page free of charge but they needn't charge me because they are making very good money from sources other than their consumers (who incidentally are also their producers - the people that produce all of the material that make their website so popular).
Similarly those computer game fanatics who produce such fantastic content for their games often do so for, well, the love of the game. In reality they are contributing greatly to the value of the game but may not necessarily ever reap the financial rewards. It seems that of all the groups in this blurry tangle of produsers some are reaping more benefits than others. While clever participants in the online world continue to toil away producing quality contributions for reasons other than financial reward it seems that people will continue to be able to profit from their efforts.
Whether it be a games producer, a social networking site, or the guy who took your small idea posted on your blog and made a million dollars, perhaps there will always be winners. And perhaps the losers will be the people contribute their time and effort free of charge. Is user led content comparable to the fight for unpaid home duties to be recognised in divorce settlements? Will the creators of the most popular Facebook pages soon be arguing for their share of the Facebook revenue. Or will someone be smart enough to start a content creation platform that pays people a share of profits based on the popularity of their website? Maybe that is my million dollar idea. Pity I don't know anything about building a website.
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3 comments:
I'm going to take the opportunity to suggest that, in my opinion, you've already covered the answers to questions posed on this post.
I should probably qualify that a bit...
I noticed that your post prior to this one was regarding internet piracy (Arrrggghhh! Ahoy there, matey!). Could this 'piracy' be the means for the saintly produser (be he or she an ace open-source programmer or a mere Flickr member) to recoup any reward justified by their contributive efforts?
Let's face it, millions of people are now contributing to the wealth of culture available online and most of them aren't getting paid for it. BUT, conversely, millions of people are no longer paying for things they used to cough up regularly for (I haven't bought a CD in years and I have no idea where my nearest video rental outlet is).
I think it might be a fair assessment to say that a good majority of contributors to the cybersphere are using that same resource to ensure they get, at least some, remuneration for their efforts.
Thanks for your comment Scott.
I've written a quick post in response. Check it out: http://whatishathinks.blogspot.com/2008/05/winners-and-losers-of-user-led-content.html .
Isha,
Your argument that produsers should receive monetary compensation certainly touches on an interesting point I hadn’t considered before, and I think your point that sites such as Facebook are generating revenue from content created exclusively by its users is very valid. However I disagree with the premise of your argument on the basis that paying people for their contributions would undermine the value of produsage as a whole.
The key difference between professional content developers and produsers is that professionals get paid for their work. By paying produsers, their contributions move away from being voluntary offerings of their knowledge, ideas or skills to an online network, and become instead ‘work’. This could lead to produsers changing their contribution habits by altering their contributions to make them more commercially viable or restraining ideas that could be seen as controversial, so as not to lose audience share and money. This model more closely resembles that of the traditional, mainstream media outlets that most platforms for produsage (such as blogs and citizen journalism sites) attempt to move away from and counteract.
Extending your post to consider this alternative side of the argument, and correcting slight grammatical and referencing errors, will enhance the reliability, accuracy and credibility of your post and will improve the overall quality of your blog entry, which does make an interesting point.
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