Original author Victor Sirotek

More and more companies are realizing there is a lot to be gained by joining the world of user-generated content. Think Facebook or Myspace, but with a model that allows users to submit and potentially monetize their ideas. I can’t help but think that by allowing individuals to create and experiment on a global platform, companies will find that it increases innovation, brand loyalty and can be quite lucrative.

Companies like Threadless.com are entirely based on a user-generated, user-chosen model. Threadless is a website that sells t-shirts. The catch is that every single shirt on the site was designed and submitted by a user, then voted on by the community. It is incredibly empowering for the users and it also creates a sort of loyalty that you will just never find at a traditional shopping site. Threadless only sells what it knows the community will buy. The users run the store in most ways.

This week at the Game Developer’s Conference, Microsoft made it’s XNA game development platform available to the public to play with on their Xbox 360’s in their living rooms. XNA is a game development system that has existed for a couple of years and has allowed average people to create content. It wasn’t until now that anyone has actually seen XNA bear any fruit. The most impressive thing about it is that it really does set a new standard in user-generated content. No longer do small developers or bedroom dabblers have to wonder how to get their efforts out to the masses.

This is one of those things that Microsoft does on occasion that is actually really interesting and will raise the bar for others. Allowing anyone to download the toolkit and create their own software is one thing. It has been done over and over again to limited success since the dawn of the computer. What’s interesting here is taking the benefits of that, combining it with the power of a social network to deliver that content to the masses. It actually works quite a lot like Threadless by allowing its users to create, submit, review, and published out to Xbox Live and into the living rooms of millions.

It is really interesting to see this market develop. Stores, publishers and companies no longer have to build everything. They can build a framework that is open enough for people to innovate and then allow them in, handing the keys to the masses. It’s a user-generated world, and I can’t wait to see everyone there!