Am I modding this site right now?

Let's take a closer look at Postigo's thoughts on consumption and creation:

"As a thought experiment, one could imagine we are modders of a different sort; we are not game modders but Web modders. Every day thousands of us log on to Facebook or Twitter, use Google mail, YouTube or participate in wikis. We take part in practices that are social at the same time that they are deeply technological. We are invited to participate, to take an active role in constructing profiles, tweets, videos and knowledge bases. Many of these infrastructures are owned by large media corporations and so, like modders modding games, we shape the face of commercial products, extend their market lives and give them dimensions that the original designers of the systems did not anticipate."

In conjunction with his "free labor" idea, this has some pretty serious implications. Is the internet a platform with us being both consumer and developer? I am currently creating content that can now be viewed and contemplated by anyone. How is this similar or different from modding a videogame? Facebook would be a ghost town without its userbase. One person using it on their own would find themself very alone and with mostly nothing to do. The value comes from user-created content. Blogs are a similar beast. Without people creating, reading, and commenting, the blogoshpere would just be a pile of personal diaries. Without a large community of people, the internet has no value.

Videogames, on the other hand, do have individual value. They have content created by the publisher. These games are then modded and more content is available. These games have more value with a large community of modders. Lucky for the publisher, people are willing to increase the value of their product for them. More and more, games are beginning to become less about content and more a platform for making content. Look at The Sims, Spore and LittleBigPlanet. Many games now ship with map editors to give the average consumer an easier way to create and distribute their own content. Videogames have become a more participatory medium. They have always been interactive and allowed the player to become Indiana Jones and experience the story, but now they are giving you the power to be Spielberg and create the story. Some people take advantage of this and some just take advantage of the creations of other players, but either way, player involvement in the creative process increases product value.