Has Digg dug it self too deep?
I’ve lost track on which round the fight between Jason Calacanis (AOL/ Weblogs ) and Kevin Rose (Digg). The two have been constantly fighting over love for bloggers to use their respective sites. Kevin’s was the first on the scene where readers vote on the best story, numerous wannabe’s tried to come into the market. Jason’s come along with his phat AOL wallet and offers to pay the top 20 Digg users $1,000 to jump and become mini-Calacanis’. Was that right, was it wrong? If you can’t beat them, bribe them. Sounds like a great short term strategy, and hopefully he can show enough love to keep them there long enough until the next offer of $1,001 comes along.
I’ve tried to Digg my posts from time to time, but just don’t really get it, not to mention that there are so many stories of how the site is bias. Whether that is true or not, it just makes me say “Fo-get-about-it”. I also find that most of the top stories tend to be very tech focused in nature which is good, but not all that I’m interested in. Being in Canada, another challenge that I see is that tops stories that may be of interst to us North of the boarder would be buried with the sheer volume of American’s using Digg.
Shel Israel shares some valid points that I’m sure others are nodding their heads to as they read his post, “Personal relevance is more important to me than mass popularity. I like the idea of people voting. The concept has done wonders online for eBay. In fact, the concept of voting thumbs up or down on people, products and politicians has proved to be a pretty good thing in the real world.
But when it comes to choosing what I read and what is relevant to me, I’m only interested in opinions from people i know and trust. I may be in one demographic. you may be in another. I may like opera and you may like Hip Hop or BeBop.”
Even Toronto business lawyer, Rob Hyndman is asking “Digg: What’s My Motivation?” Which just proves that in its current form in the current form these sites are not one size fits all.
I am just one voice, but it seems there are many more that are looking a system that offers more.
Can Digg get out of their current mess? Will Jason or Kevin take us to the future of Web 3.0?
[tag] blogging, web 2.0, Jason Calacanis, AOL, Weblogs, Kevin Rose, Digg [/tags]
Pottsc wrote:
Great observation ! I too have blogged a bit on Digg, but found it lacking any sense of community. I do however, find that the more specific you get in terms of subject, distraction in content becomes less of a issue. http://pottsc.wordpress.com/2006/09/06/blogs-and-your-bloated-blog-brain/
Posted 08 Sep 2006 at 8:51 am ¶
Jason wrote:
I think you nailed it… I came up with a crazy system of “paying people for work”
i wonder if it wil catch on!!?
Note: we hired a couple of folks from digg, but also hired the top bookmarkers/coolhunters/editors from netscape, newsvine, reddit, etc. as well. we didn’t try to buy the top 20 digg users like you’re saying… we tried to hire the most talented folks across the various services out there because we realized they were spending 1-3 hours a day making these sites great.
Posted 08 Sep 2006 at 1:20 pm ¶
Michael Kenward wrote:
I tried Digg, thinking it would be a way to sort out the wheat from the chaff. Wrong. Small band of techno nuts puffing the usual stuff.
A better model would create communities of folks with similar interests who would then feed the beast. As it is, I care nothing about the stories that interest a spotty teenager in California.
My big beef about Digg is that it has a funny idea of what constitutes technology. If it isn’t INFORMATION technology, forget it. Where do I read about energy, agriculture, transport, materials and all the stuff that really makes the world go round?
They also need to find ways to reduce duplication. Same story, different sources and reports, but still they appear. Far better to consolidate them.
Posted 08 Sep 2006 at 1:28 pm ¶