] HipMojo.com » Trouble in Land of User Generated Cornucopia?

Trouble in Land of User Generated Cornucopia?

Trouble at Digg and Netscape 2.0? 

Digg’s troubles boil down to two things:

a) its inherent model is ripe for abuse and excess: sure people initially “dig” the concept, but eventually you alienate the good and honest posters to protect against the dishonest diggers… that’s just economics and sociology at play.

and

b) in this era of “get rich quicker Web 2.0 schemes” who wants to volunteer to be a de facto editor and see you make the cover of Business Week (with a false statement about making $60M mind you)?  If advertisers/investors are drooling over Digg because its user base is so smart and educated, are we surprised that eventually, top diggers would wise up and feel that:

“we’re in general agreement that we are no longer wanted, and our hours of submitting and keeping the site alive is no longer appreciated…some are leaving for newsvine, some for netscape etc…i have started participating in newsvine…i would appreciate it if you didnt name names in the post, because digg bans people over nothing.”

Just wait until factor b) really kicks in online.  That’s innate psychology, nothing technology can solve folks!

In Netscape’s case… man, I’d give Jason Calacanis the benefit of doubt any day but that had disaster written all over it.  For the past five years I worked indirectly with Netscape.  I was impressed with the site’s resiliency over the years.  The traffic, the readers.  It was a niche site, but it was something that had value.  Small is beautiful and Netscape was not even all that small!

What’s that saying: don’t fix it if it ain’t broken?  Hindsight is indeed 20/20 but if AOL Time Warner or Jason had Digg-envy they should have launched a new site… oh wait, that’s already out there: Reddit, Newsvine, etc…

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Posted By: Ashkan Karbasfrooshan | Nov 4th

3 Responses to “Trouble in Land of User Generated Cornucopia?”

  1. Deep Jive Interests » Kevin Rose Failing Social Media 101 Miserably Says:
    November 4th, 2006 at 10:45 pm

    […] I don’t want to debate the merits of the algo change because plenty of people have done a good job already. […]

  2. HipMojo.com - Main Street Meets Madison Avenue, Wall Street and Silicon Valley » Blogs, Blog Networks and the Blogosphere At Large Says:
    November 7th, 2006 at 5:45 pm

    […] But the fact remains that in that deal, it was not the McDonald’s of blog networks (as some unfairly consider Weblogs Inc.) that really got AOL excited (or the $1M annual run rate), it was perhaps Calacanis himself, who was on his second successful dot com venture and could offer some young blood to the company’s bench over years to come.  This turned to be true as Calacanis was handed the tough mandate to turn things around at Netscape (though it was doing fine and needed no such thing) and remake it into a Digg-clone.  I’m not knocking Netscape by calling it a Digg clone, that’s just the vibe that the new Netscape is giving its own users as it searches for an identity.  […]

  3. HipMojo.com - Main Street Meets Madison Avenue, Wall Street and Silicon Valley » Web 2.0 Growth vs. Online Video, News Says:
    November 8th, 2006 at 10:29 am

    […] It should be pointed out that while Wikipedia is indeed a social media application, it raison d’etre, content and long term traction is far greater than that of Digg, Facebook and MySpace.  Digg is by far the most vulnerable to a revolt, we’ve covered this here.  Facebook can be seen as a fad because the lifecycle of students is short and nothing really guarantees that new students will be as addicted to Facebook as existing generations.  Of course, Facebook has shifted business models to compete directly with MySpace, who as part of News Corp. is a very stable company now, despite the threats (i.e. sexual predator stigma) and weaknesses in its business (advertisers not “digging” user generated content). […]

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