Alternate title: C.K.’s take on why everyone is misunderstanding what we’re doing with the Netscape offer.
The knee-jerk reaction heard around the internet is that Jason’s offer to pay top social bookmarkers is either: 1. Inherently evil and un-internet. 2. A sign of desperation to try to get good stories in Netscape’s system.
None of these are correct.
Point one is just stupid. Newsflash: Digg is making money and pays people who are employees and also Digg users who submit stories to the site. See the profile pages for Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht for the two most obvious examples of this. Can we for once and for all dispell the myth that making money in some way naturally corrupts the thing making money? If that were true, it would mean we are all corrupt, because we all have jobs / make money. It’s a wash.
Point two is wrong for a few reasons. You can ask any one of our potential future Navigators that I’ve spoken with on the phone. I’m not concerned with making sure we have good content as much as I am concerned with people participating in the system as mentors who are actively modelling how to find good stuff for all the other members. We’re dealing with something all the other social sites have never dealt with before: launching to a larger audience base that is not necessarily as tech oriented as all these other sites. For that reason, one of the major duties of my team of Netscape Anchors is to make transparent the process by which we find information. Each time there is a breaking story, we point to pictures on Flickr and local blogs alongside the major news media coverage of the events in our Anchor Commentary to help add value to the story, contextualize things, add some varying perspectives, and reveal some web tactics that a lot of bloggers take for granted. These freelance bookmarking positions are people that will post whatever they want to Netscape, but we’ll be able to point to them on the site and say, “Look at where they’re finding their stories. Look how they navigate the web.” So I’m less concerned with populating Netscape with stories than I am with educating everyone about how to find cool things on the Internet, and I think that’s the main goal of Netscape as a whole. We want to help everyone, not just tech savvy bloggers, find cool things on the Internet.
ps–Did anyone watch this week’s Diggnation? What’s with the hate, Alex and Kevin? I love Digg and I love your show. A few comments on your comments: There’s all this trash talking of Netscape and Kevin Rose says, [Digg] “depends upon this huge mass of diggers and right now we have right around half a million users… without this huge mass, no one is going to use it, and the problem, is even if he pays $1000 a month to these people, sure he gets some good stories, but no one’s digging on your site, man.” He acts like Digg has always had that half-million users. It started small and got a boost from his semi-celebrity status from his TechTV days. How is that so different from Netscape starting with a bunch of readers inherited from the old portal?
As for the “no one’s digging your site” comment: if that were true there wouldn’t be so many stories about Netscape popping up on Digg and you wouldn’t bother to talk about us on Diggnation. Also, we don’t “digg” on Netscape. We vote, just like a lot of the other social bookmarking sites out there that aren’t Digg. There’s lots of them.
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I am also baffled by all this. Seriously, is this business or just some elaborate joke? Perhaps it goes back to our taboos about money. By merely talking about paying someone for a job, openly and honestly, the squares have become enraged.
Thank you for saying this so well. Notice how little people speak of the anchors. The discussion is either about Jason (or his actions, if he’s lucky), or the digg vs. netscape thing, or Capitalism is Evil. I think this speaks to the usefulness of the anchor team, and their effectiveness. The harshness is from the malcontents, while those who are discovering new things are either hanging out and enjoying the new scenery, or participating. You’re right, it is difficult to change the habits of users… but like a certain Russian leader, you’ll have to drag some people into the future kicking and screaming…
Those who mind don’t matter and those matter don’t mind. (who said that?)
Indeed, the whole conversation on their show was simply pathetic. To quote you, “what’s whit the hate?”.
Victor, I couldn’t agree more with you, the value the anchors are adding is incredible.