Stanford Center for Internet and Society

I’ve just came across this report published recently by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) about User-Created Content (UCC). The 74-pages report, authored by Sacha Wunsch-Vincent and Graham Vickery, is a highly informative and well-written study providing an up-to-date account on the most significant developments in the area.

Jay Rosen's NewAssignment.net and Wired News just launched AssignmentZero, "an attempt to bring journalists together with people in the public who can help cover a story."

I think this is a really wonderful project that takes the concept of citizen journalism to the next level by creating a platform for professionals and amateurs to collaborate on one story. Check it out and sign up to be a part of the project. Their first project-- assignment zero-- is about crowdsourcing and the larger practice it's part of: peer production on the new information commons.

(I wrote their copyright and privacy policy so please let me know if you have any feedback on that.)

I miss Zero Mostel. I wonder how he'd use laughter to ponder and probe our Web World of today and tomorrow, and how Zero would raise concerns about the Web's privacy protections. But that's a blog for another day...

Zimbio is a cool web 2.0 collaborative media company, that has developed a great tool for promoting your blog. (Full disclosure: Zimbio is a client of my firm, and it's founders are friends of mine. So perhaps I'm a bit biased here, but I'll let you decide after checking out their new feature.)

The Rise of Participation Culture reports and summarizes a number of trends and explains "why the Internet and a new wave of Web applications have been embraced by a tech-savvy generation and spawned a culture of participation". Steve Borsch does a thoughtful job of reviewing (albeit at a high level) a number of aspects of the new web (or Web 2.0, the LiveWeb, NextGenWeb, or whatever else we want to call it) in three broad categories: Internet as Platform, Participation Applications and People. (Also available from Borsch's blog, Connecting the Dots.) This report hits all the highlights and is worth a read if you're looking for the big picture... you know, that proverbial forest through the trees.