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We started our User Generated Content site You Witness about nine months ago and I’m happy to report that it is doing well.

Our weekly slideshows are steadily getting better and, together with the very popular Reuters Photographers blog, our goal of building a community around pictures is slowly but surely becoming a reality.

We have had some major successes in the past few weeks – pictures from the Sao Paulo plane crash were not used on the regular Reuters pictures wire, which is used by newspapers, websites and some magazines and broadcasters, but only because our own content was exceptionally strong. However, a couple of the offerings from the New York steam explosion made it onto the wire despite Reuters staff photographers having some truly iconic images.

We created a special slideshow from a rare selection of pictures shot in North Korea by reuters.com reader Nora Stribma and they were displayed on the front page of the site. These images had a good resale value so we are also placing them in the Reuters Pictures Archive. Whenever we use a picture on the wire or in the archive we offer the fair price for them and pay royalties after re-sales.

There is much more to come but it is clear already that user generated content can comfortably exist beside our professional product and on some occasions enhance it.

Tom Szlukovenyi is Global Editor, Pictures