for W3c validation

This is certainly big news – YouTube is going to start giving contributors a cut of the revenue that YouTube makes off advertisements shown during their videos. The goal is to encourage creativity. Since most people (and companies) simply follow the leader, I’m guessing we’ll see an influx of sites implementing this model in their user-generated web sites. I applaud Chad Hurley for good business strategy — he focused on getting the passionate users who wanted to participate for the right reasons before providing incentives. I think it’s something many sites miss — in my mind, the quality of community content goes down with increased monetary incentives. It really comes down to the fact that passion is crucial to great contributions and money does not correspond with passion. I don’t think sites that start out sharing revenue (such as Revver) will succeed in building thriving communities.

More coverage at NewTeeVee, BuzzMachine, Techmeme, and ZDNet.

Chad Hurley at the Davos Conference in Switzerland.

Hurley briefly talks with Claudia Gonzalez of the World Economic Forum.