Produsage

What are the differences between commercial production and community produsage?

First of all you'd probably be thinking why I can't spell or (if not that) what produsage is in the first place? According to produsage.org, it is an idea who's time has come.
Explaining it simply, it is a word for user-led content creation, or users as producers. Hence, becoming produser. Axel Bruns defines produsage as "the collaborative and continuous building and extending of existing content in pursuit of further improvement" (produsage.org). Increased shared content and collaboration in a participatory networked environment is blurring the boundaries between producer and consumer, the user gaining increasingly more power and influence over what content is created.

The advent of new media technologies such as the Internet have seen a decline of the traditional model of production. The producer is not the only force behind content and decisions anymore, but the producer is now advised by consumers or even gains ideas from users. Axel Bruns identifies four key principles present in all produsage projects (produsage.org). They are:

• Open Participation, Communal Evaluation
• the community as a whole, if sufficiently large and varied, can contribute more than a closed team producers
  
• Fluid Heterarchy, Ad Hoc Meritocracy
• producers participate as is appropriate to their personal skills, interests, and knowledges; this changes as the produsage project proceeds
  
• Unfinished Artefacts, Continuing Process
• content artefacts are continually under development, and therefore always unfinished
• Common Property, Individual Rewards
• contributors permit community use and adaptation of their intellectual property, and are rewarded by the status capital gained through this process.
  

Take for example Wikipedia. I use the website to find useful information on topics of concern or interest to me. If I am not happy with an article or one doesn't exist, I can contribute to the site by writing about it or editing an existing article on it, and then re post it for anyone to access. In this way I am a user and a producer of content, thus a produser. And absolutely anyone with a computer and internet access can do it. Of course there are many more other sites such as del.icio.us, YouTube, and blogger. All its members are produsers. Me, writing this blog right now, is me being a produser. I not only use blogger.com to read about things of interest to me, but I also post blogs and comments about things that concern me (OK, I'm being made to by my university subject but it's still the same thing).

Advantages of this conventional production may include:

• faster, more frequent updates due to fewer delays caused by editing and approval processes
• greater involvement of the community
• outcomes available to all
  

However, produsage can also have its disadvantages which include:

• mistaken updates may be made available, whether potential or accidental
• community knowledge may be limited
  
• communities may have internal disagreements

Still, produsages'/user-led content creations' time really has come. Millions of people worldwide are creating and contributing content every day. If you have a MySpace page, have you noticed the counter on your home page? It keeps going up. Every day people join this online revolution. We have more of a say of what media is being created, we have more power over what we consumer. We are produsers.