We already know that many Internet users contribute content to the web. Take YouTube, for instance, which reportedly has around 15 hours of video uploaded to it every minute...! Not all of that video is professionally produced, business material. Most is what we'd call "user generated content".

Already, just over 40% of all web users actually contribute to the Internet. Interestingly, around six out of ten people who use the web actually read or watch user generated content. As ever, there are more consumers than producers.

Even so, the numbers are steadily growing on both sides of the equation. By the time we get to the London Olympics over half the web will be produced by users, with almost three quarters of surfers using the stuff.

What does it all mean? It suggests that being able to contribute, to take part, to add to web sites, to udpate them, to be involved is going to become ever more prevalent and seen as a "requirement". In other words, the days of the static, no-user-input, web page is gone - forever.

If you run any kind of online business, or use the internet to promote an offline business, you will need to have the option for users to generate content on your site. If you don't, you will be seen as rather abnormal and certainly behind the times.

And if you don't know where to start, begin with a blog and allow people to comment. But whatever you do, do something to allow your users to generate content for your site. Your competition will.

My phone rang yesterday with a client curious about how the world knew about the Hudson River air crash before any news channels were carrying the story. Twitter, instant messaging, SMS, blogs - they all played their part.

But for the traditional news media they simply couldn't run the story without first checking. After all, they'd look pretty dumb if it was some kind of hoax. Indeed, news outlets of all kinds have been duped by what seemed like real stories, when in fact they turned out to be false. The "Hitler Diaries" fooled two major publications, Germany's Der Stern and The Sunday Times in the UK. So, journalists are careful about checking facts and "standing up" the story before they commit themselves to print, or to broadcasting something.

The Internet was the first with the news of the plane crash last week and that's something the traditional media do not like. But their editorial processes, which take time, are there for a reason; to check the story and make sure no-one is trying to mislead.

Shame then that Wikipedia doesn't have an editorial process. According to Wikipedia's entry on Senator Ted Kennedy, he is dead. He may be unwell at the moment - but not that unwell. Wikipedia and its "editing community" are highly defensive of their "anyone can edit" policy. But things could change.

Wikipedia's founder, Jimmy Wales, has issued a suggestion that an editorial policy should be put in place to prevent the likes of the Ted Kennedy error from appearing. This has caused uproar.

Yet, the very people complaining about the infringement of everyone's "right" to edit and contribute would be the very ones, probably, who would also complain about errors. An editorial policy may mean that things appear online rather more slowly, but it would mean that the facts are checked.

And that would help all of us. Trust in what is published online is low. We could all help improve that trust by establishing some kind of editorial policy for our own web sites, blogs and online writing. Perhaps we just have to start accepting a slower world for the sake of accuracy.

Google has just published it's list of the most searched terms for 2006. Seven out of the top ten are for user-generated sites. That tells us that most people are searching for sites where they can contribute - not just read. Your web site users want to take part - let them....! (By the way you can add your comments below....!)

As if the power of Google, MySpace and other big players isn't enough to convince you of the need for user-generated content, consider a report in this week's New Media Age magazine. A report on page 6 is headlined News International seeks user content for new free-paper site. The story goes on to report the fact that The London Paper is focusing on user-generated content for its online edition. According to the paper's online editor, James Law, they want to steer away from merely repeating the content of the printed newspaper. User-generated content allows them to do just that.

If your web site doesn't include the option for user-generated content, the chances are it won't be the kind of web site that is required in the near future. Up until recently the web was one-way - someone published a web site and someone else read it. Now, new technologies mean that the web can become two-way, with users adding material to your web site. Because some of the most popular web sites involve a great deal of user-generated material, many Internet users are becoming used to adding material to other people's web sites. If your web site doesn't allow user-generated content, fairly soon you will be seen as out of date, past it, non accessible.

As an example, Amazon allows users to generate content in the form of reviews and book lists. MySpace, Technorati and DiggIt are all entirely user-generated. Google is almost entirely user-generated. And look at what Google is cooking up for the future - almost everything in its labs section is devoted to user-generated content. This should be telling you something. It should be pointing out that those people who look to the future of the Internet believe that user-generated content is the way to go. If you don't cotton on to that thought, your web site may have no future.