I was at a SXSW panel discussion about user customizable interfaces a few years ago. Some of the panel participants said the expected things about UI difficulties and affordances and how amazed they were at the ingenuity of some of their customers who did things with their products they didn't even know were possible. An Apple guy was on the panel, and his take was different: "Apple has standards and a brand image to protect." He pulled up the black and red vampire-themed MySpace page of some chubby goth guy and proudly mocked him, saying, "Apple will never allow anyone to do this with any of our products." He spent a few moments scrolling through the page and pointing out the most embarrassing aspects of the design, really rubbing in what a tacky mess this poor guy made out of his MySpace page.

Who are the winners, the high-value brands? Apple and Facebook, who maintained control. Apple and Facebook can't stop their users from doing tacky things with their products (not yet, thank God) but they do make sure the carefully designed brand context is always visible and easily distinguishable from the user-generated content inside. Who are the losers, the low-value brands? MySpace and other companies who didn't maintain a strict distinction between their product and what users did with it.