Netscape wants you to be their friend, and they’ll pay you for it
I like this trend.
From Jason Calacanis:
Before launching the new Netscape I realized that Reddit, NewsVine, Delicious, and DIGG were all driven by a small number of highly-active users. I wrote a blog post about what drives these folks to do an hour to three hours a day of work for these sites which are not paying them for their time. In other words, they are volunteering their services. The response most of these folks gave back to me were that they enjoyed sharing the links they found and that they got satisfaction out of being an “expert” or “leader” in their communities.
Excellent… excellent (say that in a Darth Vadar/Darth Calacanis voice for extra impact).
That is exactly what bloggers told Brian and I three years ago when we started. Given that, I have an offer to the top 50 users on any of the major social news/bookmarking sites:
We will pay you $1,000 a month for your “social bookmarking” rights. Put in at least 150 stories a month and we’ll give you $12,000 a year. (note: most of these folks put in 250-400 stories a month, so that 150 baseline is just that–a baseline).
So, paying the top end of your “social” contributors to continue to, . . well . . . contribute. Brilliant idea. Not original, but still brilliant.
Wasn’t Newsvine doing this already? Has anyone seen anything more on Newsvine’s revenue sharing scheme? I’ve noticed ads, but I can’t see anything on sharing in the returns.
Interestingly, Mike Arrington over at TechCrunch sees it as a huge red flag that they’re re-arranging the chairs on the “netscape”.
I’m not sure I agree that it’s a sign of a dying product. Could it be just a part of it’s planned evolution?
I can agree that Netscape is a pretty average mimic of Digg, I also agree that Netscape has gotten of to a pretty lazy start. Having said that, Digg is not the holy grail of social news sites. I think it has demonstrated that people want to contribute in a big way. But it still lacks any kind of practical use to me.
For the time being, I’m going to remain a techmeme and Newsvine man myself.
In any case, this is still an interesting development in the social news space.
-dg
It is not a red flag… we planned this from day one.
However, I must say, that it’s funny to me how every time someone tries to pay the little guy the rich Silicon Valley elite get so upset. Why shouldn’t top bookmarkers get a little scratch for working their tails off? bloggers get paid now… they have not been corrupted.
in six months this will seem like a no-brainer.