We've spent some time thinking about who creates UGC on the web, and we've come up with the following 3 categorizations:
1. Missionaries. These are the very, very active UGC contributors who write for the sake of benefiting humanity. Their content shows up in blogs, Q&A sites, and wikis. Wikipedia has largely been a success due to approximately 2000 very, very active Wikipedians who've worked night and day to pull together the vast majority of the 1.4M articles we enjoy every day. They do it without pay, and they would probably find the idea of getting paid for their work kind of repugnant. These folks are wonderful, remarkable, and they create terrific content. We are the grateful recipients of their terrific work.
There's only two problems with this group: (1) There aren't enough of them. Missionaries have always been a distinct minority, and their work, while terrific, tends to be limited by the small numbers in their ranks. (2) They can only work on things they believe in. Writing textbooks for children in 3rd-world countries? Sure! Helping you figure out which vacation package is better? Don't count on it.
2. Recreators. The recreators write, well, recreationally. In our opinion, these folks constitute the majority of the writers creating more than 12,000 new blogs per minute (and growing), or answering most of the 160M questions that have showed up in Yahoo Answers over the last year. They find value in community or sharing practical know-how, but more than anything they find writing and interacting with others fun, relaxing, stimulating, etc. Blogs, forums, Q&A sites, and hang-out sites like Helium and Gather are all outlets that they enjoy using for a couple of hours per day or week.
These folks create terrific amounts of content on just about every subject, and it's fun to browse through their stuff. But there's a problem with this group, too. Their content creation is almost entirely untethered from any quantifiable demand. It's almost all push, no pull. It's more about their creative outlet than your need for information. This means that while it's likely that there are folks writing about the topic you're interested in on the web, it's not necessarily likely that they're addressing your particular questions.
The web's content has become so "push" oriented that we all find ourselves combing through information that wasn't designed for us--or for anyone else, really . . . it's usually created to give the author a creative, recreational outlet most of the time--trying to find the bits and pieces we really want and need. This is now the norm.
3. The Capitalists. These are folks that want our money. And, as usual, they'll provide a better product for it, too. Why? Because in free markets, they have to compete against other folks who want our money too, and that competition is always a good thing for the consumer. Interestingly, the web hasn't catered well to date to information capitalists. They have to use eBay or kludgy PDF or eBook downloads to sell their stuff.
Yepic has been designed to give the capitalists a place to create and hawk their digital wares in an open market.
