YouTube To Pay For User-Generated Content

Posted by kdawson on Saturday January 27, 2007 @06:12AM from the sharing-it dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Speaking at the World Economic Forum, YouTube CEO Chad Hurley has revealed that the company plans to financially compensate users who produce and upload their content. With Google's purchase of YouTube last year, followed by more aggressive attempts to monetize the site (such as the deal struck with Verizon Wireless), it was inevitable that YouTube would come under pressure to share some of those fruits with ordinary users. But why didn't YouTube pay its users from the start? Hurley said: 'We didn't want to build a system that was motivated by monetary reward. We wanted to really build a true community around video. When you start out with giving money to people from day one, the people you do attract will just switch to the next provider who's paying more. We're at a scale now that we feel we can do that and still have a true community around video.'"

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Same as "paying" for Blood by acro55 · 2007-01-27 07:32 · Score: 1, Offtopic

An interesting comparison is to consider why the red cross does not pay for blood "donations." We always hear the pitch to donate blood, but never let market forces solve the supply shortage. The red cross claims if they paid, then they would have all sorts of "undesirables" donating just to get the cash. Perhaps YouTube doesn't have to worry about quality control.