Cult tv, fan relations gabfest in Cambridge Mass next month

MIT's Futures of Entertainment conference next month in Cambridge, Mass looks like a ton of fun. I mean, a show devoted to "developments in advertising, cult media, audience measurement, cultural labor, fan relations, and mobile platform development?" Link

[#1 posted by phasor3000 , October 9, 2007 12:14 PM]

From the conference program:

There is growing anxiety about the way labor is compensated in Web 2.0. The accepted model -- trading content in exchange for connectivity or experience -- is starting to strain, particularly as the commodity culture of user-generated content confronts the gift economy which has long characterized the participatory fan cultures of the web. The incentives which work to encourage participation in some spaces are alienating other groups and many are wondering what kinds of revenue sharing should or could exist when companies turn a profit based on the unpaid labor of their consumers.

A related topic would be aggregator sites that generate little original content, and mainly rely on other sites for their content and discussion material. The conventional wisdom is that the aggregator sites "pay" the content-generator sites by sending traffic to them, but has anyone ever done a "who benefits more" study?