Writers who work for nothing: it's a license to print money - John Naughton

This is an article from The Observer, and it was published on Sunday March 11th 2007.The opening passage in the article discusses how after the Virgin Express train crashed in Cumbria on the 24th February, pictures were available on BBC News Online, and others were invited to send their own pictures to the website for publishing. This is repeating the democratisation factor of anyone being able to "report" the media events.It is an example of "user generated content". The fact that people are now able to post their own pictures to the website means that eventually, we may not even need reporters anymore. It was sparked by a huge event in 2005 when London was bombed by terrorists. There was such a lot of media coverage needed to keep up with the huge amount of action going on around London, and many networks were unable to cope, and because of their desperation, camera phones and digital cameras of Londoners were used instead, as it also made it a lot more real, it was described as striking, moving, and informative. This is an article from The Observer, and it was published on Sunday March 11th 2007.The opening passage in the article discusses how after the Virgin Express train crashed in Cumbria on the 24th February, pictures were available on BBC News Online, and others were invited to send their own pictures to the website for publishing. This is repeating the democratisation factor of anyone being able to "report" the media events.

It is an example of "user generated content". The fact that people are now able to post their own pictures to the website means that eventually, we may not even need reporters anymore. It was sparked by a huge event in 2005 when London was bombed by terrorists. There was such a lot of media coverage needed to keep up with the huge amount of action going on around London, and many networks were unable to cope, and because of their desperation, camera phones and digital cameras of Londoners were used instead, as it also made it a lot more real, it was described as striking, moving, and informative. It was immediately accepted by networks, and all of a sudden, mainstream media began to understand what user generated content meant.
The flood has now becoome a torrent. Blogging, photograpgy, and making videos has now spread all over the world. with the product published on the web.
According to the article, a survey collected on the digital universe states that last year, enough digital information from emails and blogs to mobile-phone calls, photos and TV Signals was generated to fill a dozen stacks of hardback books stretching from the earth to the sun. Researchers have also predicted that by 2010 more than 70% of all the digital content in the world will have been created by consumers.
It is seen as a "great release of human creativity", because many people had the idea of expressing themselves in various media, but lacked the equipment to publish their creations, and new computer technology has now offered them the oppurtunity.
Others see it differently though. They consider the user generated content as "vanity publishing on steroids".
The media mogul Rupert Murdoch was "baffled" by consumer creativity, he believed that consumers should consume, and not create. User generated content is free and all they require is a way to publish their creation.
Nick Carr has suggested that a fundamental economic characteristic of Web 2.0 is the distribution of production into the hands of the many, and the concentration of the economic rewards into the hands of the few. It's a sharecropping system, but the sharecroppers are generally happy because their interest lies in self-expression or socialising, not in making money, and, besides, the economic value of each of their individual contributions is trivial. It's only by aggregating those contributions on a massive scale - on a web scale - that the business becomes lucrative".