Compensating Users of Social Networking Sites

It's amazing how little discussion there is about compensating users of social networking sites for user generated content, community activity, the free marketing via blog posts, tweets, etc - the primary response generally is to point out that the people running the site are not the only ones benefiting from it; Why would the user stick around if it was not a gainful or enjoyable experience in some way ?, and so on. I still remember feeling a bit peeved when reddit was taken over by Conde Nast - I was an early user and though my contribution was nothing earth-shaking , I couldn't help feeling that it was unfair. Dave Winer wonders why user's can't be compensated during a 'Bad Hair Day' podcast (~26:35) :

Take a guy like Scoble who pours his heart and soul into these products when when he really gets into it, why didn't a guy like that not get any upside. Why only employees of the company ? Why can't a user gets some stock ? I don't actually see why not.