The city editors at Judy's Book do a great job. They really seem to be aligned behind making the site, and thus, the company successful. They're part of the secret sauce at JB. We do our best to acknowldege them and thank them for their time, effort and care -- we have a whole program designed to support our city editors and staff designated to that program. We don't take their efforts for granted as it appears many of the other (more successful at this point) community sites do like myspace, youtube, and digg.
Nick Carr's blog post today points out that web 2.0 companies but users in charge of everything except profits. Definately worthwhile reading if you're interested in the topic.
Jason Calacanis' move to pay editors 1K per month for at least 150 submission at netscape raises the stakes and the profile in the debate around paying for user generated content. I tend to agree directionally with Jason's move. These users are valuable and should be treated as such. He correctly points out that there isn't yet a market for such high value users...so he's establishing one. Very smart. We'll see how it works. At this point, we've decided not to be so direct. Our compensation system has tended toward indirect compensation -- gift certificates and in-kind payments and it's likely to continue in that manner. That said, it is compensation. We'll be watching Netscape and the debate of user generated compensation carefully ....and I'll be thinking about how best to place our own bets on user generated compensation going forward.
