Is Helium Enough of a Gas to Lift Off?

User-generated sites are becoming increasingly accepted as a viable way of creating information and even money. But there's a huge problem faced by any new entrant in this sector. For a site to draw in new contributors, it needs lots of readers; but to gain those readers, you need good content, which means lots of good contributors.

A good example of this Catch-22 situation in practice is the new Helium: there's nothing wrong with the site, but equally there's nothing special about it either (though the use of peer review is interesting), so it's hard to see it gaining the momentum needed for it to succeed. (Via ContentBlogger.)