wow, i am probably writing a research paper about this.
Well, I mean, I am doing a paper about the internet and the rise of the whole "user created content" thing that is so hip with the kids. And I'm probably going to talk about message boards and usenet and such as the beginning of people using the internet to create communities. To be honest, the topic has somehow slowly shifted between Online Communities and User-Created Content... and so now it's some weird combination that I don't understand. I might be able to bring in
"The Org" as a good example, since it's a social networking site that seems largely based on linking of content-- view my profile, and you'll see my location on Googlemaps (it moves it in a semi-random direction, so that people can't actually track you down too precisely.) a bunch of my pictures from Flickr, and theoretically any videos I have updated to Youtube (but I haven't).
(The Org is really cool, and I think it is a good middle ground between sites like Myspace, that allow too much customization, and sites like Facebook that are really great for finding people but don't really encourage anything creative.)
I don't know, the problem is that the TA who I am supposed to meet with to talk about my topic doesn't really understand, so I end up getting confused myself. It will work, though. I will make it work. The trick is finding scholarly articles that I can cite.