“Should” implies some kind of assertion that there’s a “right way” and “wrong way” of doing things.

Couldn’t agree with you more.

company called Navizon is currently offering a service similar to my idea and have an interesting ‘lead user’ system in place. To use their peer-to-peer GPS network costs $20 (lifetime fee, I believe) but you can also make $20 every time you contribute a certain amount of data to their network (in doing so, improving the experience for the paying casual users).

Love this (assuming it actually works.) I just downloaded their software — will install and test over the weekend (I just happen to have a GPS for my phone, so I can try the advanced app).

This question seems a bit silly to me, quite frankly. “Should” implies some kind of assertion that there’s a “right way” and “wrong way” of doing things.

COMPANIES creating tools/mediums/places for users to create content that may then be used by others SHOULD, in a free market economy, be able to offer whatever they darn well please to those users in exchange for their services. That could be recognition, a financial incentive, heck, even a FEE! (One could say that web sites are user created content and some ISPs charge for the hosting, right?

INDIVIDUALS creating the content in those sites/mediums/places, if they have one right above all others, would be the right to be clearly told what they are or are not getting out of this relationship. They can then decide if they’d rather not do it and take their talents elsewhere.

Let the free market work it’s magic, and the rest is easy.

Now if the argument is that “hey, I created my content and uploaded it for free, but now that SL has boatloads of users and advertisers, I want a piece of the action!”, well, buyer beware. Read your terms of service. Once bitten, twice shy, next time that user will ask “how long is this agreement for.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to tell the youtube guys that I want a piece of their $1.6B for that video of my cat chasing a ball of yarn.

I see some signs that point towards financial incentives for lead users becoming increasingly popular in web2.0 products. Some I have already mentioned to you in emails, but I’ve stumbled across a couple more that I found interesting.

The first is weblo (www.weblo.com) that I mentioned in an email to you and Henry a while back. The interesting thing about weblo is that it is trying to turn all users into lead users through an ad-revenue sharing program. Even the most casual user has financial incentive to try and create quality content that attracts visitors. Of course, a ‘casual’ user of weblo still had to pay for the right to use the service, so just how casual can they be? Nevertheless I find the idea that the entire business model of the site is based off of creating a home for ‘lead users’ interesting.

I don’t remember if I had told you about my FloatNotes idea before or not (http://toomuchimagination.blogspot.com/2006/10/geotags-and-heartbreak.html) but a company called Navizon is currently offering a service similar to my idea and have an interesting ‘lead user’ system in place. To use their peer-to-peer GPS network costs $20 (lifetime fee, I believe) but you can also make $20 every time you contribute a certain amount of data to their network (in doing so, improving the experience for the paying casual users).

Second Life made it possible for Lead Users to find financial incentive for their contributions. I think as more and more companies try to create Long Tail businesses, they will likely depend more and more on Lead Users to help initially seed the system and will therefore probably work even harder to find incentive systems (financial or otherwise).

-Ben