Your Web, Your Profit?

Congratulations, you -- you Person of the Year, you.

Yes, Time magazine's Person of the Year is getting to be a bigger joke each year (I'm always impressed by the award's agility in scaling new heights of silliness).

Yes, you apparently only count if you are publishing blogs, podcasts or homemade videos on the Web. And yes, people may be right by saying this could signal a market top in the mania for so-called user-generated content.

But there's something else that all this brings up: You are getting ripped off. You are not "using" the Internet. The Internet is using you.

"User-generated content." That new buzzphrase is annoying not simply because it rolls off the tongue as easily as miso paste but also because it's misleading. You generate the content. People watch it. But you don't get a cent for it.

That would normally be fine, since there are so many things you normally do for free -- tell stories, make people laugh, send write interesting emails -- without getting a cent. But if you do the same on the Internet, people are making money from it. It's just not you. It's the sites hosting your blog posts, photos, podcasts, etc.

And that brings us to the investment angle of this new trend -- this "you-ness" -- now called user-generated content: It's just a matter of time before a company figures out that you should be paid for your content -- at least, if it's any good at all -- and starts sharing the money it makes with you.