User-generated Content

User generated content continues to grow rapidly on the internet.  Every day, people upload photos, post comments or update their blogs (like I am doing here).  Much of this information is "trivial" (i.e. not important to me), but it's important to someone, and this importance is often more in the "sharing" than in the actual "quality" of the information.

I have almost finished a book entitled "Cognitive Surplus", written by Clay Shirky about how so called "amateurs" or "volunteers" are actually creating valuable tools and services that are adding real wealth on the internet (and this translates to real wealth in the real world.)

My favorite example of volunteer labor that Mr. Shirky cites in the book is the Apache web server, which was used by about 65 % of all web sites in Sept. 2011 (it's probably about the same today)...  (this graph was taken from the Sept 2011 Web Server Survey)

Many of these sites are e-commerce sites, generating real revenue for their owners, who are direct beneficiaries.  Let's also not forget the indirect beneficiaries, including all who make a living consulting or working for companies that build web-based software for customers who sell a product or service on-line.  This has been very true in my case.  I have been (primarily) a consultant for most of my adult working life.  Nearly all of the web development work I've done since 2001 has been using some version of Apache.

The most amazing thing about Apache is that it was built mostly by volunteers (who received no money for contributing), yet it blows away competing products that were built by paid programmers.   It's a marvelous thing.  Even though I've been immersed in the Open Source movement for many years, reading through this book reminded me of how valuable this piece of software really is.