Ha…. I can see both sides of the coin on this issue. Digg is a better ‘memedigger’ than Netscape in my opinion but man, that Jason Calcanis is the Bill O’Reilly of the blogosphere (and I don’t necessarily mean that in a bad way Jason).
I just thought this comment by Kevin was pricesless:
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.
Which is is why Kevin Rose does Digg Nation and doesn’t take any sponsored ads and why he’s a founder of Digg and doesn’t own any stock in the company or take a salary.
Kevin’s done a great job at recruiting those Digg users. I really think they identify with him because he’s in the same demographic. He’s one of them and damn it they love their Digg!
Now big pimp daddy Jason’s coming along and willing to pay for the link love.
This is a damn soap opera!
One a more serious note – I think the days of users contributing for free is nearing and end. The A-list Diggers are going to want compensation just like the A-list bloggers and I think they’re going to get it.
Better yet. Maybe Netscape and Digg will both ship open APIs so that aggregators like Tailrank can index their content? Somehow I doubt that will happen (although if it happens from anyone it will probably be Digg).
(and no…. I’m not really suggesting that Kevin Rose is a communist – I just thought that was s funny title)
Update:
I was reading the cached Tailrank thread on my laptop but didn’t see Jason’s comment here:
Kevin Rose is going to make millions of dollars (perhaps tens of millions) when he sells DIGG to Yahoo (my best guess). When he does sell DIGG–and trust me it will be sold before in the next 12 months–he will have done it on the backs of those top 50 members. Those top 50 members will get exactly… ummm….. nothing. If I was running Netscape as a startup I would create a bonus pool for these users in the case the site gets bought. I can’t do that given our structure, so we’re gonna just pay folks. Kevin should do something similar.
Jason’s DEAD on with this one. RedHat gave a number of Open Source developers the ability to participate as friends and family in their IPO…
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July 25, 2006 at 10:28 pm
What kind of data would you want from the API? votes? url? comments? time of votes?
what would you do with it?
July 25, 2006 at 10:32 pm
I’d really love to just get a handle on the votes and maybe the comments.
If you’re REALLY serious why don’t you call Digg out on this … Make an open Diggosphere where all the user attention is out in the open.
This way you and Digg can both compete on building a superior product.
Tailrank and all the other Memetrackers compete but the great thing about this is that we can share all the same data (the blogosphere).
July 26, 2006 at 12:26 am
Hmmmm…. I don’t see much of a downside to putting the data out there.
July 26, 2006 at 12:42 am
That would be awesome Jason…. I’d be your best fan..
I think at the Digg v3 launch party Digg/Kevin Rose hinted that they might have an open API in the future.
Would be really nice to see an open NewsVine, Digg, Netscape-o-sphere!
July 26, 2006 at 10:13 am
Kevin, this is the intention and attention econonmy.. I dont see how Netscape will place an API out for blogosphere..
IMHO, AOL is not very cosy towards API’s !!
July 26, 2006 at 1:43 pm
“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.”
I stumbled on that too but maybe he meant that the *platform* is true, free, democractic and social… and that the *users* are devoid of monetary motivations.
July 26, 2006 at 3:00 pm
Hey kevin – FYI ..API for digg..(deep alpha ?)
http://serverboy.net/wiki/Digg