So, Kevin Rose has a blog that he’s taken the time to name my blog, and he begins this post by stating, “I rarely blog, but recently saw this post by Jason Calacanis so I thought I’d share my thoughts.”
Now, I don’t have anything personal against Kevin, but I also don’t like the trash talking that he initiated on this week’s Diggnation re: Netscape. I don’t like to see it continued in his blog post. I also don’t like to see Leo Laporte take a stance on the issue and phrase it as Rose Vs. Calacanis. I just expected Leo to look more realistically at the situation and strip it of the personalities involved.
Here’s the thing that irritates me most about all this: Digg isn’t an original idea. Del.icio.us, Slashdot, and other similar services have been around. Kevin Rose has commented on this before on Diggnation, and also commented numerous times, rather amicably how he doesn’t have a problem with “digg clones.” It’s not an original idea, but it is the best marketed of these types of sites out there. Now that they have a large footprint and a large community (something that they haven’t had since day one of their launch; why do they continually point out Netscape’s developing community as a ‘flaw’ of Netscape’s?), they are getting unnecessarily defensive and have started mudslinging, rather than addressing the issue at hand: is there value in paying top contributors and people who have a talent for cool-hunting?
Here’s the other thing that I don’t understand about all this, and, forgive me if this sounds like it’s mudslinging. I’m really not trying to go that route, but Kevin’s post brought me back to a thought I have a lot when I see Kevin acting like we’re ripping him off and when I see people defending digg ad nauseam in a knee-jerk fashion without really looking at the issues involved: Why does the entire Internet seem to think that Kevin Rose is the saviour of the Internet when he’s a former TV personality and he “rarely blogs”? How can someone who rarely blogs really be in touch with what’s going on on the Internet? I guess, social bookmarking can fill part of that practice, but it seems so stripped down compared to blogging. With how hyper-critical a place the Internet can be, I don’t understand why more people don’t pick on this point.
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{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
C.K. even if he is being childish they both have good points. Jason is trying to pay content “skimmers” for the work that they’re doing and Kevin is trying to say that Jason needs to focus on Netscape more without trying to demolish the community as it is.
“I THINK” that Kevin is right with the respects of Netscape…Netscape has made some major changes to it’s community and continues to do so. On top of that Jasons idea about paying “content skimmers” while a good idea, maybe the pay implementation isnt. (I blogged about this while ago http://shawnsblog.wordpress.com/2006/07/19/if-we-cant-win-well-buy/).
I think honestly Jason needs to focus on his website, make his users happy and then work on pissing the rest of the community off….because he’s not doing what’s right for his users. What happens when he has all this content and “contracts” with this skimmers and no one is reading it? As a fellow employee Jason is putting Netscape in a way where even I don’t want to use or recommend it.
Hey Shawn,
You ask: “What happens when he has all this content and ‘contracts’ with this skimmers and no one is reading it?”
That’s not happening. I mean, it’s an unrealistic forecast. We have a ton of readers and our member numbers keep climbing. It’s a developing community. Now, this is no real way to chart numbers, but if you look at Alexaholic (http://www.alexaholic.com/www.netscape.com) it would appear that after an initial bump during our beta launch and a subsequent dip post actual launch, we’re back on an upward slant. That’s good and that’s what we anticipated would happen.
As for paying people for having insight into what makes a cool story or not, it’s not like it is a new thing. It’s what most writers and editors in old media get paid for and it’s a good part of what Weblogs, Inc. bloggers are getting paid for. There’s no reason not to pay people for these skills in the social bookmarking / social news field.
Too many people are reading this as an all or nothing deal. We’re selecting top people to help build and guide a developing community. We’re not paying every single person out there who does this as a hobby. Weblogs, Inc doesn’t pay every single blogger on the Internet who blogs. It’s a matter of selection, representation, and affiliation.
How is that different from Digg’s fulltime employees submitting stories on Digg?
“How is that different from Digg’s fulltime employees submitting stories on Digg?”
Because they are paid by Digg, owned by Digg, and enjoy (at least I would hope) the digg community. What Jason is suggesting is ripping the people who don’t get paid but drive that community from that community into ours. Which is destryoing that community. True these people need to be paid however if anything develop a program for all people, Jasons approach is…well we’re not getting the attention that we want….so we’ll piss off a few people by fishing.
This also tells other people that their content isn’t good enough to get paid because they didn’t start out at one of these locations. I personally don’t like it, and I really don’t like having AOLs name attached to it. And not saying you will, but if you say this is a Jason/Netscape idea tell that to Kevin who’s attaching AOL to it…
Good idea, bad implementation.
A handful of users from a variety of existing sites does not “destroy” those communities. You’re being somewhat hyperbolic and alarmist.
You know it’s bad when your companie’s founder becomes more and more like Kitler every passing day.
Think about it.
Propaganda = Diggnation
Citizens = Users
And building up hatred for other services (Kevin Rose has a huge cult).
Hoping to becoming the biggest thing since sliced bread. And squash all potential competition by insult.
Lame.
c.k.,
I am sorry, but I have lost some respect for you today. I was a huge fan of yours on TUAW, but your caving man. So what if Kevin doesnt blog all the time, he is quite busy. And when I first started using digg, I loved the fact that the stories i was reading wasnt being filtered by someone. I understand that this is not what your doing at netscape, but your still paying someone to be more important that others. Social Bookmarking, or whatever you want to call it, is a democracy at it’s finest.
And if you think about it, what Kevin said on Diggnation was what the watchers wanted to hear, well most of them anyways.
As for destroying the Digg community, I do believe he is being a little radical, but if you think about it, that pay is going to take a lot more than a few users away from digg. There will be those who go to Netscape trying to make that money.
As far as the whole Digg vs. Netscape thing goes, I think it can be put this way: What is the main problem with all the “iPod killers” out there? They are trying to clone a product that people already like, instead of doing something new and inovating. Each of these products makes a little change here and there, but none does something wildly different. IMHO there are a few things about Netscape I liked when I checked it out, but would those make me switch to a whole new community? NO!, HELL NO! Why would I leave a community where the top story for the week can recieve 10000 hits versus 100?
If you can answer me that, maybe I would switch!
Good Day
Hi, Kyle,
I\’m not asking anyone to \”switch\” from Digg to Netscape. Why not use both? I do! Is that a good enough answer?
This isn\’t the same thing as an iPod / generic MP3 player #47. First: the users of the iPod / generic MP3 player have to pay for them. They are objects that you cary around. People who sell rip-off poorly produced mp3 players are arguably duping the less tech savvy users out there that don\’t realize that iPods are better.
With Digg and Netscape, they are two different services, which are free for anyone to use. And for some reason a lot of Digg users and Kevin Rose seem to not think there is enough room for these two different services on the Internet. I think there\’s plenty of room for both. For the thousandth time, we\’re not trying to be Digg. We\\\’re not trying to beat Digg. We\’re trying to build something new that is *also* cool.
WOW! I am honestly speechless right now! well maybe not because I’ve got a few things to say! First off: *cough* *cough* I am VERY sorry! Honestly. I will admit at this moment I was wrong (partially, I’ll get into that in a moment.) As obvious as it is now that you pointed that out, the two SHOULD be able to co-exist. But then again, so should North and South Korea, and we see how thats playing out. But I digress. I do not want to argue with you, but if your not trying to be Digg as you say, why would the design of Netscape be so blatently ripped off of Digg? Anyone who see’s the two can obviously see the similarities, and that is where I believe the problem lies. I believe that Kevin was a little upset that the powers who created the new netscape “stole” a lot from his “original” idea (sorry for all the “’s, but those were for lack of a better word, maybe borrowed would be better.) But back on track. After thinking about it for a while, I see that I was wrong. Maybe the two “competing” will be a good thing. Who knows. Like my wise grandmother always said, “It all comes out in the wash.”
Once again, sorry for my comments earlier,
Kyle M.
PS, I may just go register for a netscape account now.
“A handful of users from a variety of existing sites does not “destroy†those communities. You’re being somewhat hyperbolic and alarmist.”
You’re right I am, and it’s a shame I work for our company and I’m sticking up for the other people, huh? I think what it comes down for me is the fact of I sat down and did the math, I tried to figure out from the numbers that Jason was throwing around the possibilties and I still didn’t like them. I’m sorry, Alex did the best explaining about the pay for rights deal “It’s not about exclusive content so much as it is about content/experience in general. ” and it’s still not clear.
AOL for years fought to get the walled-garden taken down and now we want to pay people to snag bookmarks? No one even said anything about how they’re going to stop people from posting links to both services. Why am I asking about this? What is the purpose in having these people submit to Netscape anyways? To drive high value views no? If people are allowed to post to both Netscape AND DIGG/Del.icio.us, etc in that case we’re paying people to maintain views on both sites? Keeping value up for Digg, and maybe Netscape? Maybe because if the content is still up on Digg, etc then the people viewing don’t have to leave the site to get what they were before, so it still ads no value to Netscape.
So the argument can be made, that it’s AOLs money, it’s not much, etc, etc… I’ll tell you what, you pick 3 phone consultants off the floor from the call centers, double their yearly salary and I betcha they find you your bookmarks….they already are finding them on AOLs time as it is anyways…why not improve their life?
As it stands I’m done with it anyways, 2006 the year of the couples feuds Amanda and Andrew, Jason and Kevin…
BTW: Your blog doesn’t require a password.
Hey Kyle:
No worries. Although, I must point out that after the beta launch a good half of the Netscape haters who came over from Digg proclaimed that it was an ugly design and didn’t compare with Digg, while the other half complained it was a carbon copy. I personally don’t see how it is the big rip-off everyone is saying. Both services are social bookmarking, but there are a lot more services like these out there. We put pictures on the posts that rise to the top, we’ve got more categories, we have a group of Anchors adding context and information to top stories and suggesting interesting stories… there’s a lot that separates what we’re doing from what Digg and all the other social bookmarking / news sites are doing, but ultimately, it’s going to be the member base and the community that separates us. I want to add: although everyone is welcome, I personally don’t want Digg’s user base and I’m not trying to steal their user base. We want a new Netscape community to evolve along its own separate path.
Shawn: “BTW: Your blog doesn’t require a password.”
Shhhhh! Don’t tell anybody! ;-)
“As it stands I’m done with it anyways, 2006 the year of the couples feuds Amanda and Andrew, Jason and Kevin…”
Haha. Although this is funny, I have to point out that Jason and Kevin have never been a couple and they’ve never (that I know of) been in business together. The Netscape vs. Digg dichotomy is a false one that is being created by Kevin Rose irresponsibly attacking us while inebriated on Diggnation and riling up all the digg fanboys and girls. Jason never said “Hey we want to steal all the top users from Digg and empty out their community!” (Note: this is the way Kevin et al are trying to spin it). His offer was to top social bookmarkers (from whatever sites) and also it’s not some mass undertaking either. We’re only talking about 12 spots, according to Jason’s post on the matter. So we’re looking for people with passion and skill and who are leaders in this space to help lead a new larger, and perhaps not as familiar with social bookmarking, community through their example.
Hiring an AOL phone consultant who daily neglects his / her real job to Digg stories, as you propose above, doesn’t sound like hiring someone with passion and skill and who is a leader. Don’t get me wrong: there are passionate and skilled leaders in call centers, I’ve known a few, but those passionate and skilled leaders aren’t wasting work time on Digg or Netscape. They’re working passionately.
Never underestimate a cause and a common enemy.
Digg has a cause, and now has a common enemy to unite their users against.
Typically, this can work wonders (as someone from TUAW would know…). In this case, I’m not sure how I feel about it yet. It’s not as zero-sum as other comparrisons might be. Not only is there room for both on something like this, having both in play validates the space altogether, which is a good thing (k.rose’s future networth went up 10 fold the day netscape launched)
I think though, pointing fingers at Netscape takes the heat off of Digg for, in some eyes, abandoning their core user base as they move away from Technology (personally, I think they need too).
“abandoning their core user base as they move away from Technology”
They are not moving away from tech, they are simply adding more categories. Tech is and always will be their bread and butter. It’s the same as Apple “moving away from computers.” They didn’t move away they added Music and Media to the mix, which has made their computers better. It all works out.
Kyle,
I think it’s appels to oranges, but it’d be like Apple going after accounting firms instead of hipsters. Music gadgetry is still decidedly tech.
If tech is their bread and butter and what they’re focused on for the future, then they wouldn’t so much mind Netscape’s presence in the field — its a completely different demographic. Ignore netscape.
But IMO, “common folk” are a demographic that Digg, and everyone else in the space, wants. The tech/topic matter is a very, very small fraction of the world. I’d say it’s attractive to say, 2%, of the total population. And of that 2%, only 1% of them contribute. For as social as “web2.0″ is, it’s decidedly an echo chamber.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with having niche. In fact, that niche is exactly Digg’s strength.
Anyway.. with all this digg vs. netscape fuss, you have to admire Reddit for going through with white label approach. I think they’re on to something personally.