Sharecropping on the Internet

“A loophole in the content business that will be closed by savvy startups which identify the top 5% of the audience and buy their time.” – Jason Calacanis, CEO of Weblogs, Inc.

It just makes sense that the content creators who drive the most traffic deserve some of the financial gain if anyone is making money at all. Calacanis set the model in place by paying bloggers. He now wants to expand the project to the top users of DIGG, Delicious, Flickr, MySpace, and Reddit. Seemingly, just to make the point.

The only problem I see is that he’s not including the most popular content on the web: attractive teen girls on YouTube.com. For example, here’s what happened when LonelyGirl15’s parents let her go hiking... with Daniel. Here's a blog in tribute to her.