Web 2.0 wealth check.

Byline: Matthew Sparkes

Web 2.0 wealth check

There are many websites that, directly or indirectly, monetise the content produced by their users. Amazon, for example, depends heavily on customer reviews to drive sales, while Digg is composed entirely of news stories submitted by users, and millions of websites supply Google with the metatags that create the search giant's content. All three sites profit from unpaid users supplying them with content, which is a fantastic business model if you already have -- or can build -- a loyal user base.

Many sites are now opting to share revenue with their users, which encourages participation and can help to build the community. Web 2.0 is all about user-generated content, and more and more often, those users are being rewarded for the content they supply.

Newsvine is a social media site with a mix of traditional news agency material and user-written articles. In return for creating content, users are paid 90% of all advertising revenue generated by it. However, site

co-founder Calvin Tang says Newsvine users would participate even if there were no profit-sharing. "Our best contributors participate in Newsvine for the love of writing and conversing with other intelligent people," he says. "The payments are largely icing on the cake."

Netscape, most famous for losing the web browser battle to Microsoft in the mid-1990s, is taking a different approach to paying users for content in its Web 2.0 strategy. Rather than sharing any profit derived from a user's submissions, Netscape has chosen to recruit a team of "super-users" from other social media sites and put them on the payroll. These 30 "navigators" are paid $1,000 a month to submit a minimum amount of content, as well as to comment and encourage unpaid users to participate in the community.