Sportingo mixes UGC with professional editing and content

Boy, this really IS the age of UGC (user-generated content). Techcrunch reports on Sportingo, a new Sports-oriented site that blends UGC with professional editing and licensed stats and photos. What's interesting to me about this model is the blend of UGC, professional editing, Digg-like game mechanics, and an advertising revenue model.  Definately a development to keep an eye on.

...The company’s editors write headlines, fix grammar, approve tags for consistency, apply search engine optimizing metadata to each article, attach relevant statistics and photos licensed from outside vendors and determine placement of the stories on the Sportingo site....Reader interaction with each story will also impact the placement of stories...The revenue model is entirely based on advertisements...

User contributors develop reputation through reader ratings of their stories, with status levels starting at Rookie and moving up to being in the Sportingo Hall of Fame. High status contributors will gain privileges like private meetings with athletes and editorial control over their own sections of the site. Unlike many similar sites, there’s no revenue sharing plan for contributors.

...From sports to personal finance and investing, there are a number of startups right now trying to bring structure to topical and prolific segments of the blogosphere, but Sportingo’s investment in editorial control and outside resources that require professional development could really offer users a chance to participate in a very compelling sports journalism community. We all know about the many shortcomings of mainstream media, but the pitfalls of pure user generated content are becoming more evident as well. This kind of hybrid is quite intriguing.

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