My colleague at City University, Neil Thurman, has published his latest study on user-generated content (UGC). You can read a pre-press version on his webpage. The headlines?

UGC is being held back by:

1. Legal liabilities – publish and be damned.

2. Moderation costs – “80 per cent of the user generated content initiatives launched by the publications surveyed for the study were edited or pre-moderated. These costs have not yet been fully off-set by the revenues generated.”

3. Low participation – not enough users actually generating content.

4. Insularity – the narrowness of some UGC.