Terry Semel of Yahoo! has said that user-generated content is very important and a huge part of Yahoo! and its ability to monetize. Over the past year, Yahoo! launched a publishers network that puts ads on users sites and also purchased Flickr, the very popular photo sharing service. The portal profits from the services by selling ads to run beside them or by charging subscription fees. Revenues rose 47% last year to 5.26 billion. Thats excellent for Yahoo!, but Anil Dash, a well-informed blogger at dashes.com and VP of professional products at SixApart, which is the largest independent blogging company, wants to know what about the users who create the content. Mr. Dash, who in a blog post commented on Flickr's process of classification of user pictures according to interestingness, wants to know if interestingness is its own reward. Mr. Dash could be hinting that users might be compensated monetarily with another type of value. A hearty discussion began in the blogosphere, and entrepreneur Paul Mooney reflected many peoples beliefs with his comment: Profiting from user-generated content is Web 2.0 colonialism. However, Flickr founder Caterina Fakes response indicated that the value from social software systems is in connections, online identity, self-expression, and attention-getting. Among topics covered are companies that share revenues with content providers (Gather, Newsvine, WurldMedia/Peer Impact, Revver, and Scoopt), challenges related to obtaining volume, and chances that there might be future kings of user-generated content.