i was just reading pranab's interesting blog entry about "user generated content --- how important is it?", in which he looks at how user generated content is perceived by the corporate dudes & dudettes, and he remarks
Also at the same time, I feel that UGC is very important, and unlike what some people consider that UGC is secondary, my conclusion is that is perhaps the most important factor for VWs. VWs like Second life gives tools to its users who can build 3D models without the need for expensive 3d tools like Maya or trying to learn open source 3D tools like Blender.
--- and i wholeheartedly agree. in fact, i think it's one of the reasons that secondlife will become increasingly difficult to beat: it's got tons and tons of user created content. even if you were willing to cough up the money to recreate content on a similar scale, it would not be the same because of the diversity of the content creators --- we thrive on textures (visual textures, but also sound textures, fabric textures, food textures!), content generated following a corporate recipe will always lack that quality of textures we get from an environment that has grown over time (history!) and has been contributed to by many creative people. it's also one of the reasons that internal, corporate driven virtual worlds and web 2.0 systems never really fare as well as external systems: too little texture, not enough real culture (the term corporate culture is in many cases, and increasingly so, an oxymoron, i think). chatting to the CTO of a larger consulting company recently (as part of my IBM work, i'm not about to change jobs 
i learned that their internal facebook look alike system was used by about 800 or so of their employee, but that they found more then 14'000 of their employee being active on the real facebook...
for me the conclusion is clear: don't waste time with internal virtual world systems, don't waste time with internal web 2.0 systems for which there are much better systems on the internet (don't get me wrong: IBM's fringe web 2.0 service is excellent and very useful, for example) --- instead concentrate and contribute to open up and standardize on a SL based open grid!
I have the same stance on the importance of user-generated content, and I’ll add a couple of additional points which support the same view. Merrily mixing metaphors …
First of all, you don’t build pyramids by throwing everything away and starting afresh. Well, you can, but they’ll be small pyramids, stifled at birth. If you ride on the shoulders of those giants that we hear about so often, you not only cover more ground, but you also see further ahead. It’s not only a metaphor: by not needing to reinvent everything, you actually have more time for insight and vision. Both commercially and in terms of empowerment, you start streets ahead.
And secondly, Lindens crystallized two very important corporate insights when they gave life to the AWG: the fact that scalability and interoperability are, for quite different reasons, limits to growth in this area.
The scalability issue needs no elaboration: the mile-high flames coming out of Linden Towers are a testament to what happens when you lose sight of the scalability ball.
Lack of interoperability doesn’t cause meltdown, but it can be just as limiting and debilitating. Unlike transiently visiting websites, people do not have the hours in the day to “live” in hundreds and thousands of virtual worlds concurrently. MMOG gaming worlds today sequester players into their little universes and hold them there as subscription fodder, but that model has no hope of growing beyond current confines: both people’s wallets and the hours in the day are extremely finite resources. This observation leaves us with two alternative endpoints on the spectrum: either live with the MMOG model and carve up the 3D universe into a million tiny pies of which you can enjoy only a handful, or else interoperate and let people load up their personal smorgasboards from a billion planet-wide chefs. Lindens clearly share my all-embracing palate.
And of course, once you decide to interoperate, then using existing world content as a foundation comes naturally, which makes the pro-interop viewpoint support the importance of user-generated content.
Many metaphors were harmed in the making of this post. I don’t apologize.
Morg.
comment by Morgaine — November 6, 2007 @ 13:25