For godsake Digg, will you grow up!
Ok, so you all remember that AOL’s Netscape is offering the top social contributors to many of the popular social news sites some cash for doing the same on Netscape.
Well Digg founder, Kevin Rose has responded with:
Clever PR stunt, but man, in the end I believe it’s going to do more damage for Netscape than good. Ya see users like Digg, Del.icio.us, Reddit and Flickr because they are contributing to true, free, democratic social platforms devoid of monetary motivations.
What a load of idealistic horseshit!
I wish I lived in a world of fairies and butterflies too. These platforms are NOT “devoid of monetary motivations”. Is KR doing this for free? No!
This is the real world of grownups.
Oops, I think I just hit the nail on the head. Grownups! (my previous thoughts on the adolescence of Digg here and here). Attract children, and you’ll keep children (don’t get me wrong Barbie and Tonka still make truckloads on cash). The scale of social news is far wider than just the kiddies contributing to Digg. The race is on to see who captures the rest of the world (all 99.9% of it). Cause I tell ya, fancy graphs showing digging activity may distract the little boys and girls in the toy shop, but they don’t necessarily work on the grownups. Digg needs to innovate; cause looking pretty can only get you so far (ask Gary Coleman).
That’s where the difference lies. Calacanis (and others) want(s) to turn this into a business that can actually benefit the “society” behind it – in a real way, rather than use their customers up and give them very little in return. He wants to attract sophisticated content with greater appeal.
There is no doubt that Digg helped usher in this new era of social news, but if they keep this attitude up, they might find themselves drinking alone at a diggnation recording. Newsvine and Netscape are on the right path as far as I’m concerned.
Finally, to address Leo Laporte’s comments on the issue. Leo is right, the top 10 contributors to a social news site do not impact it in the slightest – as there will always be a top 10. The real question is around the quality of that top 10 and if I were a betting man, I’d say that a cash prize behind door number 3 might just bring some quality to the table.
-dg
PS did anyone see the front page article on pretty LED tiles for your bathroom? Gosh they’re cute and just so damned useful too. Where would my life be without Digg.
Turn Netscape into a business benefiting society. Right.
You say Kevin doesn’t do this for free. Obviously not, he’s got to support himself but the way you said it made him look like a future corporate monster. Sure the Digg and Diggnation shirts and such bring in some revenue, but do you honestly think that enough money is made to keep the site uploaded and have the massive bandwidth taken care of and still have enough for Kevin to have all that much left to himself? You seem to forget that Kevin Rose is just a beer-loving guy who’s really into tech and such, not some has-been company like, oh say NETSCAPE! I can’t remember the last original thing Netscape did except maybe the browser, and EVEN THAT’s ripped off of Firefox now. I have to disagree with Kevin and Alex there; ripping off Firefox does not make Netscape cool. But I digress.
I honestly don’t care that Netscape has a Digg copycat thing going on, but trying to buy users is a pretty sad move. Why not, instead of buying users, use that money to put out some more conventional advertisting and attract legitimate users who are relatively new to this type of news system and aren’t already biased towards Digg? Simply buying out Digg’s top users won’t help them in the long run. It’s sad to see Netscape trying so hard. Before Firefox came along I loved Netscape, but now…well it’s just another company.
Just some thoughts from a Digg “child”,
O. Davey