Britannica is trying to a take a hybrid approach which combines Britannica's editorial expertise with Wikipedia's principles of transparency and openness.

In the interview with the SMH, Jorge Cauze also bemoaned that Google's search results consistently ranked Wikipedia higher than his own Britannica. The reason for this, however, is simple: you need to be a subscriber to get access to the full content of the Encylopedia Britannica. If you are not, the site will constantly pester you with overlay ads for its premium membership and only give you access to a limited range of features. Given a choice, most writers will link to the free Wikipedia instead of the Britannica, which, in turn, enhances Wikipedia's standing in Google's index.

There are many reasons why Wikipedia trumped Britannica on the Internet. For one, Britannica took a long time to open up to the Internet, which gave Wikipedia a chance to become the de-facto Internet encyclopedia.

Difference in Quality?

As for the actual difference in quality between the two sites, that question still remains to be answered. A 2005 study in Nature concluded that Wikipedia (at that time) was about as a good a source as Britannica, but the study was heavily criticized by Britannica (see Nature's rebuttal of Britannica's rebuttal for more details about the discussion).

Britannica Can't Scale

In the end, however, whenever somebody discovers a mistake in the Wikipedia, those edits can be made public within seconds. Currently, the Wikipedia sees more than 150,000 legitimate edits pre day. The most active Wikipedia users have made over 200,000 edits. There is simply no way for Britannica's editors to approve this many edits - the process simply wouldn't scale unless they hired a lot of highly qualified (and fast) editors.

A group of Stanford University researchers specializing in artificial intelligence, Saxena and Siddharth Batra, and Assistant Professor Andrew Ng, created this new technology they're calling ZunaVision. The embedding technology is driven by an algorithm that first analyzes the video while paying close attention to the section of the scene where the image or video will be embedded. It then subtly alters the color, texture, and lighting of the embedded object to better fit it in with the surroundings. As other objects pass in front of the embed, it disappears from view and as the camera pans and zooms, the algorithm shape-shifts the object accordingly. The appropriate shadows are also added for a more realistic feel. The end result is an embed that looks as if it was there all along, instead of being some obvious insert or overlay that is clearly not a part of the scene.

This type of technology is nothing new to the big Hollywood studios - they've been using similar methods for years in order to do special effects. Until now, however, there hasn't been a way for people to perform these kinds of advanced video edits without investing serious money into professional video editing software. But with ZunaVision , anyone and everyone can accomplish this same task in minutes, with only a click of the mouse.

Revolutionizing Video Ads?

Videographers are already thinking of creative and imaginative ways to use this technology to liven up their videos and amateur films, but the real financial potential of ZunaVision lies in advertising. With ZunaVision, anyone with a video camera could potentially earn money by agreeing to place corporate logos or ads within their videos before uploading them to the internet. That could be a hugely successful venture if the technology was adopted by Google, for example, to become the "AdSense for Video" and integrated with their video-sharing site YouTube.

At the moment, YouTube is experimenting with different methods of monetization, including overlay ads on embeds, post-roll ads, and allowing publishers to bid for sponsored placement of their videos on the site. These methodologies are still too new to provide any conclusive data as to their success just yet. ZunaVision seems to be just as promising, if not more so, than any of these current experiments.

The ZunaVision site features several example of these in-video embeds, which you can see here - there are well over a hundred examples of both user-gen videos and clips from TV and film that demonstrate the technology's potential.

You can sign up and try ZunaVision for yourself by clicking here.

Firstly, a reminder of what Jigsaw is. As we noted in our previous post: Jigsaw works on a "pay or play" principle. You can just pay to get access to the contact information, as with any list. Unlike traditional lists, you can buy just one name. So this works well for selling high value stuff to senior people, not good for mass market spamming. Play means earning points by contributing contact information back into the system. They seem to have evolved good systems for managing this to avoid gaming and bad data.

Push Marketing

Marketing/sales can work on both pull and push. The big trend in Web 2.0, driven by search, was "pull". You pull in interest based on content and then convert that interest to revenue. In the old days, almost all marketing was push. You found people who might be prospects and contacted them. The ratio of push to pull is different today, but in the Web 2.0 world we might think it is 100% pull. Outside, in the real world, push marketing is alive and well. If you do any push marketing, you should consider Jigsaw. If you think push marketing is dead, this is not for you.

If you need to contact people that you don't already know, you need their contact details. That is where Jigsaw claims it can help.

What we like about Jigsaw

Here is what we like about Jigsaw:

1. Simple, clear, memorable, bold and differentiated mission. Jim was totally clear that Jigsaw only wants to offer the 11 fields that make up a basic contact record. They will partner with and link to any service that has greater richness and depth (such as ZoomInfo and LinkedIn). While that is a very narrow objective, Jigsaw doesn't lack for ambition. They want every basic contact record on the planet.

2. Jim Fowler. He started this business to solve a real problem that he had faced during many years running a sales team, he got VC funding when it was tough to get in late 2003 and 5 years later he is still running the business and in the latest quarter they have turned that corner to profitability. Jim's "yea, no more dilution", was spoken like a true gritty entrepreneur of the old school.

3. A solution that one can believe will succeed. Based both on parallels in other industries as well as initial success, Jigsaw has a shot at kicking the ball into the net. The traditional method of the data vendors is labor intensive, with fixed costs. The data vendor contacts the companies to get the right contact data. They are like traditional Encyclopedias. Jigsaw is like Wikipedia. That is a great sound bite and a great theory. Is it working in practice? When does the tipping point come when this new approach beats the old approach in practice? The fact that Jigsaw has hit profitability indicates to even the most cynical that maybe that tipping point is close.

OK, But Does Jigsaw Really Deliver?

Jim understands that the devil is in the details and that execution is everything. He clearly admires how LinkedIn beat Facebook in the business market when everybody in the Valley (including Jim) thought Facebook would eat their lunch.

In our first review of Jigsaw it came up short. The bottom line at the time - not quite compelling yet. But it looks worth another try. Wikipedia-like approaches do take time to mature. In Part 2 of our series on Jigsaw we delve into the details a bit to see what works and what doesn't work in Jigsaw.

The VimeoLand toy gives a look at recent happenings on Vimeo. VimeoLand displays an interactive landscape of characters that represent the latest actions from Vimeo users. Hovering your mouse over a character will display a pop-up containing one of the following recent actions:

• A comment
• A like
• Recent signup
• Recent upload

Each action includes a link to the profile of the user who completed the action and a link to the video that the action took place on. What's a little random and unique about VimeoLand is an airplane that flies back and forth above the landscape. Clicking the plane will cause a random video to be dropped from the plane's cargo. It's pretty nifty. Vimeo fans will find this particular toy to be very useful and entertaining.

Currently there's only one other toy available. If you're looking for something less flashy than VimeoLand, we recommend Pulse.

Making Your Own Vimeo Toy

We're interested in seeing what other unique visuals developers will create with Vimeo Toys. To help developers get started, Vimeo has listed a sample XML file with over 50 activity items to choose from. Vimeo's team of workers will decide whether or not your toy is worth being featured on Vimeo. While this isn't a problem for us, we'd rather see the community take a vote on what stays and what goes.

What we think would be really interesting to see is for Vimeo and developers to take things to the next level. By this we mean seeing a visual graph of what our friends, or a select group of users, are up as a Vimeo Toy. The current offerings are still a little too random for our tastes. Nevertheless, we're happy with what we see so far and look forward to see what else is next.

The site now features tips and trick by members of the community, as well as Microsoft staff. Users can rate the contributions by other members on a five-point scale. In order to prevent abuse, content needs to be voted on by at least three community members before it is featured on the main community page, which Microsoft has dubbed the "Clubhouse," and which is only accessible by using a Windows Live ID. This content is also featured on the homepages for the individual applications that make up the Windows Live brand, though interestingly, some applications like Live Calendar and OneCare are not featured on the site.

Especially good content will also be pushed to the Windowslive.com front page by the editors. Microsoft assured us that it would allow negative posts to be featured on the site as well and that it would not censor any valid opinions - assuming that the users abide by all the terms of service for WindowsLive.com.

The Clubhouse

As of now, the central hub for creating and sharing most of the content for Windowslive.com is Live Spaces. In order for post from there to appear in the clubhouse, a user has to tag them with 'Clubhouse' and the name of at least one Live application. Indeed, it seems tags are the main glue that hold the Clubhouse together, as Microsoft also uses them to determine a list of possibly related posts. For now, the Clubhouse is only open to a select few member of the Windows community, but Microsoft will open it up for everybody in the coming weeks.

In the next iteration, Microsoft will also allow importing items from other platforms like WordPress and Blogger, Marty Collins told us.

In terms of the overall design, the Clubhouse is quite well done. One nice feature are the user profiles, which are pulled from Live Spaces. These profiles also lists a user's other posts and their ratings. In the Clubhouse, users can see all the latest posts tagged with 'clubhouse,' as well as the most highly rated posts.

It is interesting to see that Microsoft is willing to experiment in this area. On WindowsLive, it allows Microsoft generated content to stand next to user generated content, which could potentially open Microsoft up for some embarrassments. At the same time though, if Microsoft holds true to its promise of not censoring legitimate content, then this represents an important step forward in how Microsoft interacts with its customers.

Upon login, you're taken to Tripwolf's main page where you can immediately begin a search using the provided search box or you can click on one of the tabs to access other areas of the site like the galleries (photos), travelers, journals, guides, or the soon-to-be added "trips" section.

On the left side are links to your personal info - your personal galleries, your trips, your profile and messages, etc. There's also a handy scrapbook feature on to which you can drag-and-drop places you find on tripwolf when doing travel research. That scapbook can be shared with friends via email, or, with one click, transformed into a PDF that you can download and print out as your own sort of personalized travel guide.

Content Galore!

Tripwolf's investor and content partner is MairDumont, a European provider of travel information who offers a range of printed publications for tourists. MairDumont's involvement with tripwolf allows them to provide content for the site, including destination information and photos. The combination of this high-quality content along with that which is user-gen gives tripwolf a more professional feel while still retaining the fun of a social network. It's also nice because there's a lot of content to explore right away - currently over 200,000 points of interest have been cataloged - so you don't have to wait on a userbase to do all the work for you.

When you come across a destination you want to update with your own info, a wiki-edit feature lets you upload your own photos, add and update places, add facts, reviews, and more.

The Facebook App

Thanks to facebook integration, you can easily find who among your friends is already on the service and invite others to join you. You can also add friends from LinkedIn, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Outlook, Thunderbird, Mac address book, orkut, and Xing.

On facebook, you can use the app to search destinations, keep track of your favorite places, and view what your tripwolf friends are up to.

Get In Today

The site goes public on July 1st and, at that time, they will be adding a way for you to book trips. An iPhone application will also soon follow. However, ReadWriteWeb users don't have to wait until July - you can go ahead and join now the private beta now by clicking this link. (Feel free to add me after you do.)

TruCast allows companies to monitor internet buzz by analyzing blogs, social networks, consumer opinion and review sites, bulletin boards, discussion forums, newsgroups, and online news sites to determine what's being said and how engaged customers are with the company's brand. Several well-known companies currently using the TruCast system to monitor and respond to their customers include Dell, Microsoft, Panasonic, and Hormel.

Dell, who is known to be one of the more forward-thinking companies when it comes to listening and responding to their customers, uses TruCast to actively monitor posts, comments, and conversations on 40 different online topics related to the Dell brand, the details of which are revealed in this new case study which has been posted to the TruCast web site. According to the study, TruCast enabled Dell to reduce the negative sentiment about their brand by more than 50%.

TruCast 2.0

Now, with the launch of TruCast 2.0, the technology has been improved to monitor and discover even more online conversations than before. According to the company, TruCast now currently harvests and analyzes nearly 70% more data than any other competing applications. The technology they use delves into the social conversations that are taking place - reading through comments, follow-up comments, and more to determine the relevance and attitude of each item it finds.

TruCast Dashboard

More importantly, TruCast works with a business to give the right people inside the company the access to the relevant data in order to respond in a timely and appropriate fashion. And although the conversations are coming in from all over the internet, TruCast streamlines them into one central application where they can be tracked, read, and answered, which makes the workflow of brand analysis and response as simple to handle as checking your inbox for new mail.

TruCast Response Manager

If you want to learn more about how TruCast is helping companies stay on top of the ever-changing social media landscape, you can view this presentation (below) from the American Marketing Association's (AMA) Online Seminar:

| View | Upload your own

A Jupiter Research report on this subject analyzes the risks of negative buzz. The report is entitled "When Good Social Marketing Goes Bad," but it should be noted that most people use the term "social marketing" to apply to campaigns that mean to bring about social change. The Jupiter report, however, uses the term more casually to mean any marketing campaign that relies on user-generated content of a viral nature.

What they discovered was that although marketers have been quick to embrace this new trend - 35% allow for user-generated content (UGC) on their own web site and 21% have a profile on a social network - they have not been as quick to monitor and combat the negative buzz that some of their consumers will create.

In fact, only 29% of marketers using these techniques are monitoring the online discussions about their products on an ongoing basis and a shocking 17% don't monitor online discussions at all. Also, despite the availability of professional "buzz monitoring" services like Nielsen BuzzMetrics or MotiveQuest, only 8% of marketers used these services in 2007.

Who's Talking Trash?

The Jupiter report was also able to build a profile of the typical creator of negative user-generated content. This person is usually a heavy user of social networks, predominantly male (60% are male) and into technology (40% are influential in this area and 23% are considered "early adopters"). They are also a potential valuable audience for marketers as 49% tend to act as brand advocates - which means they tend to be vocal influencers who spread the word online.

How to Fight the Negative Buzz

Before trying to combat the negative buzz, the first thought needs to be whether or not it's worth the effort. Often, marketers will attempt to offer these negative UGC creators special treatment or invite them to be beta testers in order to keep the feedback private and productive. However, these tactics are not always practical and they don't always work, either.

A marketer must be aware of how far and fast their company will go to fix a legitimate complaint and also how likely the complainer is to adjust their response. Keeping in mind that research shows that only 12% of online adults think UGC like those posted on social networks or message boards is "trustworthy," going to great lengths to quiet the naysayers is not always worth the effort.

Of course, sometimes it is worth the effort, which is why the most important thing for a marketer to determine is whether or not the negative content is created by someone who just wants to take a cheap shot at the company, or whether it actually offers genuine insight into a product or service's failure. If so, then addressing those persons that created the negative UGC makes sense. Then, it can actually be helpful to engage those people openly in the public forum to show the company is listening to valid complaints and responding. That is a difficult choice to make for a company, as it only takes one loud negative voice to affect an influence on the larger group of the company's customers. However, when done well, this type of response can be a benefit to all.

Conclusion

Lately we've seen a lot of companies attempting to combat negative online buzz in new ways - Comcast has been monitoring blogs and social networks for mentions of their company, Digg is now holding online townhalls, and many other companies are offering customer service via Twitter. We've also seen the potential volatile situation that can occur when one disgruntled customer's voice can attract the attention of the whole crowd, as in the situation with Ariel Waldman's complaint against Twitter. Even she admits on her blog that she never meant "...to bring a mob with pitchforks to Twitter’s door," yet that is the power of even one complaint.

An old adage in advertising and marketing is that "a satisfied customer will, on average, tell five people, but a dissatisfied customer will tell everyone they know." For a company to be successful, especially now when the tools for communication are being intentionally placed in the customers' hands, it is more important than ever to know how to analyze, monitor, and respond to negative online buzz.

In February, CNN launched user-gen citizen news site i-Report, which was originally just a feature of the CNN web site. They also held two CNN-YouTube presidential debates over the summer. The new site, which looks and feels a lot like YouTube, offers many similar features like the ability to rate and discuss videos and embed them elsewhere.

But CNN is far from being the only large media outfit to launch citizen journalism ventures. For example, Yahoo and Reuters teamed up on You Witness News, BBC has Your News,and MSNBC has a section of their site that features citizen journalism, as well. MSNBC also owns citizen journalism site Newsvine, too.

Apparently, YouTube now wants to bring some of the focus on citizen journalism back to their site, where so many of today's citizen journalists post and share their work.

About Citizen News

On the introductory post, Olivia writes (and posts a video of course - see below):

"Thanks to better, cheaper, and easier access to video equipment, there's an amazing amount of news being reported on YouTube every single day by citizens in all corners of the globe. You're conducting interviews with local community leaders, doing weekly reports on the latest campus news for your school television station, and investigating untold stories you think the world should know about. This stuff is fantastic, but we want to see more from you all and to bring more citizen journalists into the fold." 

Even if you're not a citizen journalist yourself, but you just happen to stumble across some excellent citizen journalism on YouTube, she wants to know. She's also interested in knowing how YouTube can serve citizen journalists even better and she asked for all thoughts, questions, and other feedback to be sent to citizennews@youtube.com.

In the video below, Olivia introduces Citizen News and gives examples of the types of reporting they're looking for, which can include everything from university newscasts to citizen journalism straight out of Sudan:

Derrick Comedy

A small sketch comedy group from NYU, has generated almost 40 million views on YouTube alone. YouTube success turned into a gig producing exclusive videos for CollegeHumor.com as they continued to do live performances. They have recently taken a break from their online shorts to produce a feature length film.

Self Defense

Amanda Congdon

The orginal host of popular online video blog Rocketboom, Congdon turned her success as a video blog host into a gig at ABC and appearances on TV shows like Good Morning America. She is reportedly currently working on a TV show for HBO and appears in a series of American Express commercials.

Ask a Ninja

Ask a Ninja was originally supposed to be an animated show about two Ninjas living in Orange County, but improv comedians Kent Nichols and Douglas Sarine evolved the questions & answer format into a hit video series. In January of 2007, the comedy team signed a deal with ad network Federated Media that was reported to be worth at least $300k/year if Ask a Ninja maintained its traffic levels.

Ask A Ninja: Question 9 "Ninja Love"

Jessica Rose

Lonelygirl15 was YouTube's first big star. Revealed to be New Zealand actress Jessica Rose after months of speculation, she was able to parlay her YouTube fame into representation by the United Talent Agency and has now appeared in a feature film, has a recurring role in the ABC Family TV series "Greek," and won a 2007 Webby Award.

WineLibrary.tv

Gary Vaynerchuk's WineLibrary.tv draws 40,000 viewers each day to his energetic shows that bring wine knowledge to the average guy and gal. While Gary may not need to stress about monetizing his videos (he turned his father's New Jersey liquor store in a very successful business), has has used his online exposure to help generate huge buzz around his personal brand and online business. You might have seen him on Late Night With Conan O'Brien, or the Ellen Degeneres show eating dirt and tasting sweaty socks.

Does The Color of a Wine Have a Huge Impact on Quality or Age?

(I chose this video because Gary rips up one of my posts in it - thanks for being delicate, Gary.)

Andy Samberg

A member of "The Lonely Island," a group of LA-based independent filmmakers who made comedic short for the Internet, Samberg used the success of the group's "The O.C." parody (called "The 'Bu") to land himself a featured player role on Saturday Night Live. Samberg's "Digital Shorts" for the show often become Internet phenomena and his "Dick in a Box" short won an Emmy for Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics.

Video Sites that Pay

You might not have the time to create a regular series of videos, but if you can find the time to generate even a few great videos, here are some video sharing sites that give a little back to the creators of the videos.

• YouTube.com - YouTube has a partner program that is based on cost-per-impression advertising, so the more your videos are viewed the more money you make. It may not be the most lucrative site to post videos on, but it is the most popular. Good for people who produce regular content or for sporadic video submitters.
• Revver.com - A lot like YouTube, Revver shares income from advertising revenue with content creators. TechCrunch had Revver close to entering their deadpool, but a recent acquisition by LiveUniverse seems to have breathed life into the site. Revver has paid out more than $1 million to users, beating YouTube to that milestone by a few months.
• Break.com - Break has a very simple model: If they choose to feature your video on the homepage you make a few hundred bucks, with the potential to earn up to $2,000. That video showing your roommate drop a hot iron on his crotch would probably do best with the Break audience.
• Blip.tv - Blip works similar to other ad revenue sharing sites, but they also allow you to work on selling your own sponsorships on your videos. Blip is best for video series that draw their own traffic and have the potential to find their own sponsors.
• AtomFilms.com - Not the easiest place to get your video picked up, but it may have the most traditional media reach. AtomFilms selectively licenses original short movies from amateur and indie creators, and pays them royalties from their ad revenues. If your film is original, entertaining, and legally distributable, you can make real money with AtomFilms.
• Metacafe.com - Probably the most transparent of any of the video sites that pay for your content. Metacafe breaks it down to "$5 per 1,000 views." Another good option for that iron on the crotch video of your roommate.

User Contributed Video Contests

You can play your cards in the game of finding traction on video sites like YouTube, but more and more opportunities are popping up for creative people to leap-frog from uploading content from their living rooms to watching their work on the living room TV. There have been a few user generated video contests lately and I'm sure more are coming in the future.

Doritos - Crash the Super Bowl

The ad world is heading towards some very uncharted waters. When prosumers are able to create work on par with some of the world's top ad agencies, why not tap the creative talent of the masses? Doritos did exactly that for their Super Bowl ads last year. They had consumers create and send in their own ads, and then selected the 5 best commercials to air during Super Bowl XLI. A huge amount of exposure for the winners, and the $10,000, plus a trip to Miami for a private Super Bowl party wasn't to shabby.

MTV

MTV is running a User Generated Video Contest right now for the 2008 MTV Movie Awards, with one of the winners even receiving a golden popcorn award on stage. The other winners will be in the audience with their creative work shown to the celebrity laced gathering as well as on national television.

Current.tv

Current has taken the user created ad model to the next level by developing a platform and marketplace for the creation of user created adverts. New ad assignments pop up on the site and users create ads for that company. If Current airs your ad, you make $2,500. If the company decides to air it elsewhere you could earn up to $60k.

Each search engine is actually a collection of user-submitted links, and a search using that engine will only pull back results from the sites listed. For example, the Topicle search engine Mortgage Advice only searches www.realtor.org, www.fdic.gov, www.homeloanlearningcenter.com and a few other URLs. So when you select the Mortgage Advice engine and enter in a search term, you will only get results from the listed URLs.

Mortgage Advice Search Engine

Each engine is rated by Topicle users from one to five stars. The popularity of the engine comes from both the ratings of users and how many people use that particular Topicle engine. The most popular search engines are listed on the homepage, as are the newest engines and your recent engines. Some currently popular engines now include iPhone Unlock, Movie Trailers, Best Recipe Sites, and San Francisco.

Users can contribute additional URLs to improve upon existing engines or create brand-new engines from scratch by submitting a list of URLs.

Although the site is powered by Google Custom Search Engine Technology, the site is more of an anti-Google. Says Steffen, "Topicle generates more precise and useful search results with sources recommended by humans, as opposed to sources picked solely by a computer algorithm."

No mention was made of how the site will deal with link quality or manage spam submissions.

The site joins the human-powered search space, an area where Mahalo's human-powered search already dominates. However, Topicle's twist of basically putting a pretty front-end onto Google's custom search property may allow it to carve out the niche it needs in order to succeed in such a narrow space.

However, on page two, the guidelines specify that posting of sound, moving images, and still pictures is not permitted. This guidelines apply to any Olympic events, including the "sporting actions" themselves, the ceremonies, or any other activities that require an "Olympic identity or ticket."

So, they are basically permitting you to post text only? What is this, 1995? So much for user-gen content, it seems. May we then suggest that 2008 becomes the year of the twittered Olympics instead?

According to Wikipedia (a site Stern specifically cites as an example of UGC), user generated content "refers to various kinds of media content, publicly available, that are produced by end-users." Wikipedia lists discussion boards as a type of UGC site (it even lists Digg as an example of a user generated content web site). Digg's comments act in very much the same way as a discussion board -- encouraging people to comment on news stories, videos, and images (very often leading to more comments than are made on the original source article).

Stern's objection to Digg being a user generated content site seems to focus around the word "content" -- as Stern argues, much of the submitted content is unorginal. But the comments on Digg, no matter how useless some might find them, are original media content provided by the users for publication on Digg -- which is enough to fit the Wikipedia definition, at least (and this is why we might say the comments section on any media site are an example of user generated content). In some cases, Digg provides utility for users to respond to content that doesn't allow commenting at the original source (i.e., many mainstream news articles). These responses qualify as user generated content in my opinion.

But even if you agree with Stern that Digg is light on user generated content (and there is certainly a case to be made there), there is no denying that Digg is a user generated site. Digg has very little -- if any -- editorial oversight, and the content on the site is dictated by users. As the HD DVD crack episode last May showed us, Digg may not have much control over its users do with the site's content at all.

That said, while I think it is fine to call Digg a user generated content site, I see Stern's point. When you say "user generated content" you think of YouTube or Wikipedia before you think of Digg -- i.e., the sites that immediately come to mind are those where there is a major creative element to the content being contributed by users. But if Digg isn't a user generated content site, it is certainly a user something site. So how about this: user managed content site. (You can even drop the word "content" if you'd like.)

What do you think? Is Digg a user generated content site? Let us know in the comments below.