Have to disagree with you here Pranav. There are two reasons why actually paying people in cash for reviews doesn't work (proven with ciao and epinions..)

1: People are fed up with only getting small pay cheques (£10 / month, if that) for a lot of work they put in and don't want to do more for that kind of value

2: Paying affects the quality of a review as you're either only getting someone to submit something because they know there is some cash at the end or it loses trust and credibility with the group

Thanks for the comment, Philip.

I have a very strong conviction that the pay to contribute model will be an huge part of the next generation of social networks.

In the "Web 2.0" era, people contribute a whole lot more than they did when in the early days when such pay to contribute models first started and later failed. I think it is the way the incentive is packaged and marketed is what will be the deciding factor in which startup or internet giant will effectively leverage this model of internet usage to their favor.

In this packaging, if a social network treats their users and contributers as partners rather than freelance workers, that would work a whole lot better. Contributions can be incentivised in terms of an algorithm based on popularity and effectiveness of the contribution. "Making Money" can never and should never be the central theme of such a network - it should be contribute the best you can, and both, the creators and managers of the platform and the user/contributers are rewarded as partners in content creation and monetization. In such a scenario, users would contribute not because they want to make money out of the netowork, but because it is their own network - to the extent of their contribution. whatever they contribute, is their own, and makes them money, too.