User Generated Comics at Bitstrips.com
Wednesday, March 12th, 2008
The founders of Bitstrips.com are passionate about user-generated content and comic strips. This week they launched a do-it-yourself comic strip service that garnered much deserved attention on the trade show floor at SXSW Interactive.
Bitstrips.com is an example of user-generated content at it’s best. I mean, who doesn’t at some point in life wish they could illustrate comics or draw? Taking an aspirational skill and making it fun and social for the masses is a winning strategy as proven by the likes of Rock Band and Guitar Hero.
Users are able to customize an avatar for their account using the comic design tools and there are all the social networking tools we come to expect like friends, comments, ratings, etc. They put in some cool peer production features like shareable characters and the option to allow other users to edit your strips.
It didn’t take long for users to discover the peer production functionality. BA from Bitstrips created a Mark Zuckerberg character for this hilarious strip which was then used by Wired in their Twitter mash-up comic (featuring a snarky tweet by yours truly).
As with many user-generated content services, Bitstrips content rights are still evolving. Their current Terms of Service provides that users retain the rights to content they post (such as character dialog) but only grants a revocable license for non-commercial use of content created using the Bitstrips tools. During SXSW they told me they were talking to Creative Commons about a more robust licensing structure.
