One of the current questions on the web: How do you monetize MySpace? Of course MySpace is finding a way to monetize their content and userbase by signing search deals with Google, launching music sales, etc., but that fails to reap the full potential of the passionate users.
You provide a way for MySpace users to make money from their sites, and the content created will bring in advertisers and revenue opportunities.
I think that despite the press fawning over the “peer economy” of collaborating, the evolution will lead us back towards a more corporate, profit-based model.
(By “peer economy” I mean the unpaid contributions, product reviews and comments, videos, photos, etc. from the masses, creating, remixing, and contributing to the Internet and commerce, Flickr, del.ico.us, Amazon reviews, etc…)
There are enough people out there, who by contributing and creating, begin to see their abilities as valuable, and will try to find ways to make their passion into profits, in the aim of aligning work and fun. We have begun to see that with bloggers finding ways to go commercial. Technology bloggers/writers Om Malik, Rafat Ali, etc. taking VC money to expand their blogs are particular “old-economy” examples of the trend. People putting advertisement and affiliate referrals on their sites, testing out the easily accessible tools to collect small bits of revenue from their websites, their videos, their work, their passion.
Sooner or later, we will see a more organized movement from companies formally building these tools to allow people to monetize their work. Revver.com is an example of that, taking the same video-sharing model of YouTube and the like by adding advertisements and allowing the contributors to share in the revenue streams.
(BTW, the Internet offers a huge contrast on this point compared the the wireless “Internet” [at least in the USA], due to the widely different control over the content delivered by the access providers… but that is another beast).
I’m excited in the coming months of years of reaping the benefits from using the services and from the potential of turning my own passion into profits. Off we leap, with millions more to follow. Who’s up for it?
