The Contribute Button on YouTube

Google has recently integrated YouTube and their Google Checkout function in the form of a "Contribute" button on candidate videos.

This move makes me start to realize why Google has been pushing so hard on adoption of Google Checkout. When you add a money processing to many of their other services, the value of those services increases dramatically.

What happens when people start to be able to sell some merchandise right off their YouTube page? Or how about selling pictures to people on your Picasa page? User-generated content becomes monetized, and Google gets to take their cut.

Right now I don't think that the Contribute buttom is available to the general public, and of course I don't know the legal issues behind it, but I think it's going to end up being a big win for Google. I know that we were trying to use it for a donation drive at Penn, and I have no doubt that others would love to use it as well.

It's certainly thinking outside the box for how to monetize social networks, and I think that's exactly the kind of thinking that the Internet needs.