It seems like there is a long running meme in the blogosphere about gaming Digg, and it even made it as an article on CNet the other day (despite a few inaccuracies). Despite the controversy, there is one thing that Kevin Rose has always maintained — that Diggers have never, and will never, get paid — mostly because he feels it would create an unfair sense of hierarchy in social networks, as said at the Future of Web Apps this past September. Jay Adelson has also echoed similar sentiments (although he admitted they were worth more than t-shirts).
Well, in spite of that rhetoric, it may come to absolutely no surprise that in talks with some Diggers, I have learned that some of themare routinely being spammed emailed with unsolicited requests from private companies to help them submit and promote their own stories., in exchange for money. The frequency is in around once a week or perhaps even more frequently, and is as inelegant as the following:
My name is xxxx and I have been recently promoted as xxxx at xxxx. Our company sells xxxxx . My job is to get people interested in our site, but my problem is that I have not had any success. While searching the web for possible business partners, I started to read about Digg and its popularity…that’s where you come into play. Given the fact that you are the xxxxx user at the website as well as xxxxx, I am contacting you to see if I can somehow recruit you to start getting the word out about our service.
Please check us out, see what you think and get back to me.
More shocking, perhaps, is that some Diggers have taken up some of these offers at sums that are shockingly modest. Some of the payments are structured as retainers, a set fee per month, and in other cases, they are structured much more like a pay per submission, with bonuses if a story makes it to the front page.
The rationale behind these mercenary dealings?
Again, it didn’t surprise me.
When questioned, one Digger said something to the effect of “they were things I was going to submit anyway — and if Kevin Rose isn’t going to pay me for my time, maybe someone else will“.
It sort of reminds me of the backdealings in some 3rd world countries; because officials are paid so little, they’re functions are effectively for sale — not because they’re inherently corrupt, but because the system either cannot or will not compensate them enough to make their jobs worthwhile for them.
Kevin Rose has gone on record about NOT paying diggers because he’s afraid of creating a fundamental sense of inequity between some diggers (the ones who would be paid) and the rest.
The irony, of course, is that there is already a fundamental sense of inequity between diggers, and this was shown by the simple ranking of Diggers — and the fact that top diggers’s submissions and votes are worth more than Diggers who just joined up. Changes in the algorithm has changed this somewhat, but the principle is still the same.
And if that’s not a hierarchy within a social network, what is?
Now, Kevin’s reasoning aside there is another issue entirely: Jason Calacanis, lately of Netscape, has clearly shown that all other things being equal, when given the option, people would rather be paid for their work. Or at the very least, recognized in some small way for the contributions to the site.
(As an aside, Kevin Rose has also gone on record about top diggers being recognized in other non-monetary ways, but this has yet to materialize)
So where does this leave Digg?
By not compensating its submitters in the same way a competitor has, its left Digg’s foundation open to influences that were never intended to affect the way that news was read, submitted, or voted on. And in a very real way, its left’s Digg integrity for sale.
What’s the solution? Quite frankly, I don’t see any way except for recognizing Diggers in a real monetary way. Its the nature of the Web2.0 these days as I pointed out a few days ago: all other things being equal, people don’t want to quibble about how the commercialization of the web corrupts its social nature. Rather, people want to be paid for writing in their blogs, they want to be paid for surfing, and as Netscape shows, they would like to be paid for submitting to social bookmarking sites.
At this point, Digg might feel tempted to try and root out diggers taking money for submissions and voting. That’s fine and within their purview. The problem, of course, is that if they root out diggers taking cash for diggs, all they’ll do is create a vacuum for other diggers to take their place. And there’s nothing stopping them from realizing that their time and energy is, in fact, worth real dollars, when companies start contacting them as well.
And that’s the other thing that’s worth remembering.
Lest all of the diggers who cry “who cares what people do?” and “what digg does is their business” and “who cares about what makes the front page? Let’s just enjoy it!” consider this.
Front page stories means cash to sites that land there. Its that simple.
Front page stories mean traffic, traffic means unique visitors, and unique visitors translates into pageviews. And no matter what your opinion about pageviews as an relevant or obselete marker for selling ads, the fact that they are still used as a metric means that that traffic means money.
And, after a time, a front page Digg means inbound links — in one study, a front page Digg lead to as many as 500 inbound links thereafter. People pay SEO firms cash for inbound links, because inbound links translate to better SERPs.
I’m interested to hear what Kevin Rose has to say — and do — about this. Unlike Netscape, Digg isn’t fronted by a huge corporation (AOL) with cash reserves. Its still in the VC stage, and there’s been some debate how profitable it really is. Does it have the cash to pay its diggers competitively? How much would it pay if it could? Would that be enough?
Well, I guess we’ll have an opportunity to ask — Kevin Rose has been slated to come and do a Netscape chat next week, and I might just pose a few questions myself.
16 Comments
I wonder if anyone ended up buying spikethevote.com?
http://engtech.wordpress.com/2006/11/19/spikethevotecom-the-anti-digg-goes-for-sale-on-ebay/
Actually, looks like someone bought spikethevote and set it up as a redirect to digg.
Great piece, Tony.
Is this true? How does Digg value them differently?
And, I hate to say this, but all of this is part of normal social networks. I mean, this is commerce. There’s an underlying assumption that social means egalitarian, but it’s just not so. I’m not saying that you were assuming that, but it seems to be so on a wider scale.
Social design, as I see it, models the good, bad, and shady parts of society. If you haven’t checked out JPGMagazine or Threadless, they’re excellent models of how commerce can work without shadiness. Wrote about that here: Paying People for Voted-on Content: What’s the Right Model?
My thoughts have been why do they not give out prizes of some sort to top users on Digg in certain categories. Since they have grown so large I’m sure they wouldn’t have any problem getting sponsors for this. They could give away a video card or something to the user who left the most comments one month (but they would not need to announce what the category would be since users would just start spamming comments.)
@chris: that’s a really good idea.
it would have to be fairly random to prevent gaming…
Yeah it would have to be random, because it would be gamed like crazy.
“Front page stories mean traffic, traffic means unique visitors, and unique visitors translates into pageviews.”
Not so much. I think it’s been pretty much proven that any traffic a site gets from digg is fleeting and doesn’t translate into long-term traffic.
Don’t think so Sam?
I have three names for you:
John Chow
Muhammad Saleem
Neil Patel.
All have grown their blogs to huge followings thanks to Digg; now, if your blog is crap, then you’re right — the traffic falls off completely.
If your blog is something people find worthy to come back to then its a tremendous strategy.
What you’re confusing it with is conversion rates to, say Adsense — although in talks with people who do that sort of thing, even then, its not necessarily the case — which does mean, directly, cash when they get Dugg.
Cheers
t @ dji
Tony,
Again, good job. Monitization of the social network is only going to be a bigger topic as the industry grows. The question with payment is “authenticity”. Currently, it is implied that digg submissions, user-generated content is authentic, it is a reflection of the tastes and desires of the digger or the author. When 3rd party money is introduced it undermines the authenticity, it calls trust into question and can, overtime, undermine the perceived vale of the information. This is not good! It will be interesting to watch this play out. I see connections to your self regulating blogoshephere, people are self-interested, given the power (a high ranking in digg is power) expect corruption. It is what it is!
Yup, those are all good examples of digg success stories.
If you search on digg you can see how many top posts they’ve had:
http://digg.com/search?area=all&age=all&sort=most&s=www.johnchow.com&submit=Search
http://digg.com/search?area=all&age=all&sort=most&s=themulife.com&submit=Search
http://digg.com/search?area=all&age=all&sort=most&search-buried=1&s=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pronetadvertising.com%2F&submit=Search
What really helped Neil Patel was webtickle submitting his sites.
I proposed a simple solution to this problem over at my blog. Thx for the article, it’s really well written. However, I think that another problem is the fact that on Digg, the top 50 users really own the front page. They can turn the tide on any story if they act as one. So that’s another problem – you need to compensate them for their efforts, but you also need to make sure they don’t control the system.
Good point, Tony. I agree with what you say about quality, a site must have good enough content to keep visitors coming back, not just diggbaiting posts. And even then, I think it still takes a couple front-page-of-digg-stories to keep that traffic flowing in.
And for the most part, I guess I am talking about ad click-throughs. But that’s what we *have* to be talking about if the conversation is about the monetization of digg traffic. You say “the fact that they are still used as a metric means that that traffic means money.” I think that depends on whether a site is using an ad broker or adsense. I’m pretty sure that most of these sites are using adsense (I may be wrong on that), which could give a crap about traffic if it doesn’t click through…. I think we can all agree that digg users are ad blind for the most part. Reference http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/51580 for anecdotal proof.
Sam
Sam, there’s no question that for the most part Digg users are ad-blind, and that conversion rates go down … however, in discussions with people who have been dugg a few times,
a) conversion rates don’t go to zero (usually)
b) sometimes, the click through rate is maintained at the same rate
In either case, the flood of uniques (up to 100k) is so high that in some cases it more than makes up for the drop in conversion rate.
While there is some debate over how good (or bad) the conversion rate is, clearly it doesn’t drop to zero.
Cheers
t
Josh,
Thanks for stopping by.
I’m aware of threadless and JPG — and I totally agree … they do commercialization right.
The problem as I see it is a philosophical one. While I understand that commercialization is the end game of all of these social networks, and that social != egalitarian, what is irksome is that Digg portrays itself as such … egalitarian, free, and initially, by a Geek, for a Geek.
Is it “wrong” that Digg is built upon a community of users, where Digg does nothing to recognize the contribution of its highest and best Diggers? That’s debatable — but from an economic point of view, it is probably untenable to NOT do so once the competition starts doing so.
As Netscape has proven, all things being equal, people like being paid for their time.
(As an aside, it values its accounts differently based on the weighting it gives different accounts … experienced ones and those with a high front page success rate are weighted higher than ones that have just been created — check this interview out at marketingshift: http://www.marketingshift.com/2006/9/diggs-kevin-rose-recent-indiggnation.cfm)
Cheers
t @ dji
Jim — you speak the truth sir!
People act in their best interests, and I think that element of humanity has been lost in the geek open-source ethos that Digg was spawned out of.
I used to get all riled up about it, but its time to face the nature of what we all are and deal with it in an open and transparent fashion — so that we can introduce elements into systems that prevent the disengagement of “authenticity” from commercialization … two things that are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
Ex: paying for posts corrupting the blogosphere — sure it does, but (and all link juice arguments aside) I think you can deal it in a reasonable fashion so long as you are forced to say what your influencing factors / agents are. People may shout that your blog has changed forever now that your posts are for sale –but as a whole, that’s something that the blogosphere can never go back on.
Cheers
t @ dji
___________________________________________________________
As a former top member, the fact that Digg was offering a free valuable service, making it quite easy to get updated information from a variety of sources, concerning a variety of topics, was motivating enough to help by contributing.
After all, Digg is paying the hosting and maintanence on this very expensive undertaking – all the users have to do is type in a URL 24/7 to be informed
14 Trackbacks
[...] Digg, spre deosebire de Netscape care plateste celor care trimit stiri, nu plateste top-submitterilor sai nimic. Se pare ca acestia primesc bani “negri” de la anumite firme pentru a scrie despre acestea(de bine, presupun ). Mai multe detalii aici Site-urile vedeta ca Youtube si Digg nu considera ca ar trebui sa-si plateasca “generatorii de continut”, in timp ce mai modestele metacafe, netscape fac acest lucru in speranta de a atrage continut/audienta de calitate. Atunci daca banii oricum isi fac aparitia in sistem nu e mai bine sa se gaseasca o modalitate de a se face totul la vedere? [...]
[...] As Digg increasingly confronts the spectre of spam and gaming of the system (Tony Hung has the latest round), Kevin Rose and Co. have been forced to add increasing complexity to the Digg algorithm, to the point where the value of a Digg on Digg has become so opaque as to be rendered utterly meaningless. Which raises the question — why even bother to show the number of Diggs? Here’s a sample from today’s front page: [...]
[...] I have talked to these Diggers to confirm that they have taken payments in the past, or are still continuing to take payments. It is through sheer coincidence that as I am collecting information from these Diggers (who will remain anonymous, along with the sites that are paying them), I got the following email yesterday. I thought about posting it or not posting it, and at first I handed it over to Tony to deal with, but then thought that it merits some commentary from a Digger’s and paid social bookmarker’s perspective. [...]
[...] Posted: Friday, December 08, 2006 8:10 PM by Will Femia Robert Scoble offers advice on how to interact better with your blog readers. It’s mostly the kind of basic “how to blog” advice we used to see a lot of when the blogging wave was really cresting. His item 10 is about writing good headlines. Though I have fun trying to think of clever headlines for this blog, I often wonder if I’m hurting my own traffic. When people come to the front of MSNBC.com and see my headline way down at the bottom, do they click it out of interest or ignore it because it has no clear meaning? Looking at my Google referral stats this week, I’d do well to title every post “pantiless Britney.” Speaking of advice on engaging people online, Diggers Are Getting Paid — But Not By Kevin Rose – I hadn’t thought of this, but I guess it makes sense. Rather than learn how to participate in online social sites, some companies are reportedly paying active social site participants to advocate on their behalf. But don’t think Digg is taking that lying down. Still speaking of efforts to engage the online audience, “This is a rumor that just won’t die: The major television networks are considering creating a new online video service joint venture to compete with YouTube.” What I don’t understand about this idea of the networks teaming up is that if they would just put the video on their own sites with a link that can easily be shared, why do they need to form a partnership in the matter? I go to Comedy Central and find their video stuff hard to use so I search for it on YouTube and find a better link. But if I go to NBC, ABC or CBS, I can find their shows and watch them in full (with mixed results on stream quality and finding a direct URL). I’d be real interested to know if they see a decrease in pirated versions now that they host it themselves. The only thing they’d need YouTube functionality for then is fan mashups and user submission contests. Elsewhere, “Major media companies are realizing that their digital assets are far more valuable than they initially thought, and they are reacting by putting folks in charge of those assets who they believe will protect the company.” How to make ginger ale – The real kind, with yeast that makes its own CO2 and the result has a bit of alcohol in it. Mysterious Arctic sharks found in Québec – I love mysterious aquatic life stories. That’s why I was bummed when they axed Surface. The Christian vs. Christ follower video series has caused a stir among online Christians. Speaking of upsetting Christians, Jesus Christ in a romantic comedy might be one of the worst ideas ever. But I do like this quote: “You see something basic like Britney Spears showing her crazy monkey to everybody, you find yourself thinking, is this the fall of the Roman Empire?” Who needs horsemen when there’s the crazy monkey of the apocalypse? SchoolFizz is like Digg using campus news outlets. My only complaint is that it takes two clicks to see the referenced story. Condoms ‘too big’ for Indian men – Time to recalibrate your gross cultural stereotypes. Also consider updating the list of worst jobs in the world. Just as we read that piece from Dave Neiwert complaining about the lack of coverage of a white terrorist, the news explodes all over the TV screen that a potential terrorist has been arrested, last name Shareef. I’m almost afraid to check back for his reaction. Llamas Enlisted to Thwart Biological Weapons – Apparently they have a special antibody in their blood that would serve as a signal, so their role would be more like a canary in a coal mine than a drug sniffing dog. The most popular 10,000 websites analyzed – 8 Questions & Answers – Includes many surprises. Top 50 Music Videos Of 2006 One more for the Christmas list. White Christmas doo-wop animation. No tricks or jokes or obnoxiousness. Don’t blame Google Maps for Kim’s death – Doesn’t include mention of the vandal. “The James Kim thing has me thinking – what would I want in my car if that happened to me?” How I Knew James Kim - Points out that the depth of the online material surrounding the lives of the Kim family members was part of what made the public care so much about the family. Maps of James Kim’s path The rollertoaster is the flatscreen TV of toasters. NASA Images Suggest Water Still Flows in Brief Spurts on Mars. History of snowboarding in 2 minutes – An actual survey of the history, not a joke video. Turkish Star Wars?!?! And a clip. I would have thought that Star Wars would be a particularly good movie to dub to other languages. Half the characters don’t even have mouths that move. “ComicSpace is a place for comic fans and creators to connect with each other. Comic creators can host their comics for free.” It’s MySpace for the comics community. Santastic II – One of those DJ mash-up CDs. “This collection of Holiday mash-ups and bootleg remixes offers a new and unusual spin on the classics you know and love.” Since this makes two years in a row, we can probably add this to the seasonal online traditions list too. NOTE: I’ve only listened to the first few tracks so far so be aware of the potential for headphones moments in some of these. Mountain Bike Trickster - Don’t let your kids see this. “Utah Supreme Court justices acknowledged Tuesday that they were struggling to wrap their minds around the concept that a 13-year-old girl could be both an offender and a victim for the same act – in this case, having consensual sex with her 12-year-old boyfriend.” This might be an amusing story if being a sex offender weren’t such a serious label. Check out the reaction from the uTorrent community on the news that their preferred filetrading service has been sold. “1,200 people came out to play Capture the Flag on the streets of downtown Toronto.” America Before Pearl Harbor – Early Kodachrome Images “Portland’s so-called ‘festival street,’ which opened two months ago, is one of a small but growing number of projects in the United States that seek to reclaim streets used by cars as public places for people, too.” I am really excited for this idea to spread. Basically they didn’t ban cars from the street, but they took out all the things that signify that it is purely the domain of the automobile. Drivers are forced to proceed slowly and with caution because they’re essentially driving through a pedestrian mall. “If cities replace what he called “traffic artifacts” with “living room artifacts”—people, landscaping and street furniture—drivers will lose interest in speed and identify themselves as part of the larger social landscape.” Turn a tea bag into a hot air balloon - Or, how to set the kitchen on fire – Or, how to put a black mark on the white ceiling to make mom freak out. Say hello to the good bye weapon – I always thought that non-lethal weapons would be a great advance for civilization but between all the taser headlines and this thing it seems like we’ve found an unknown sadistic middle ground. [...]
[...] But now, according to Tony Hung at Deep Jive Interests, some of the top Diggers have found other ways of getting compensated — including getting paid by companies under the table for submitting their pages to the site. Several top submitters have reportedly been approached by companies to submit pages for money, and have done so. Some have been paid per submission, others on a kind of retainer, and some have received bonuses if a submission makes it to the front page. [...]
[...] But now, according to Tony Hung at Deep Jive Interests, some of the top Diggers have found other ways of getting compensated — including getting paid by companies under the table for submitting their pages to the social-media site. Several top submitters have reportedly been approached by companies to submit pages in return for money, and have done so. Some have been paid per submission, others on a kind of retainer, and some have received bonuses if a submission makes it to the front page. [...]
[...] Jason Calacanis today wrote on his blog about how the first Digg scam had been outed. The scam has been in some manner been exposed for quite a while now, and has previously been covered by me as well as Tony. What Jason is reporting is unconfirmed pieces of information that he wants confirmation for, from Digg, Kevin Rose, Karim, or the other parties involved. That said, it is regrettable that someone posted the story to Digg, titled as Calacanis confirms a top Digg user on the take. Jason has not confirmed most of the details yet, and that is why his post starts with the following disclaimer: [...]
[...] An interesting discussion is hot these days about top diggers getting paid to Digg someone’s story. Kevin Rose stated clearly that “Diggers will never get paid” because it would create an inequality among those that do get paid and those who do it for free. I offer a solution: give the Diggers some of Digg’s traffic. [...]
[...] We also can look at this information to… Bill Gates has a birthday coming up, but it doesn’t look like his staff will be getting him a new operating system. Windows Vista is nearly… Somthing like that have Digg Account, Will Submit One of the questions that’s continually raised about Digg (and indeed, many other social media sites) is for how long users will tolerate doing the manual labor for sites without receiving any sort of financial remuneration. Obviously, the idea with something like Digg is that the users’ work benefits themselves by creating the site — in essence, free access to the flow of stories from the collective body of readers is the payment for submitting and ranking stories. Some social media sites have tried to change this by paying people to submit items to the site, but that’s something Digg has sworn it will never do. However, apparently popular Digg users are being solicited by companies (via Techmeme) to promote their stories in exchange for payment. It’s hardly surprising, but it’s an interesting problem for Digg, or any site where the “top” users hold a lot of influence. It’s a question of incentives: if Digg offered users a way to profit, would they be less interested in schemes to profit from selling their influence and gaming the system? Some sites are already using revenue-sharing plans, where submitters of popular stories and highly-rated opinions get a share of ad revenues. Of course, even with such a plan in place, there will be some users that will still sell their “services” to others seeking to gain some online attention, but if a revenue-sharing system is viable, it would remove (or at least lessen) the incentive to do so for many users. Some people try to frame the issue of payment almost as a moral one, that it’s only right for these users to be paid for their work. But moral superiority isn’t the main concern for social media sites here — they may be forced to start paying users to try and protect the integrity of their systems.Did you know that Will means deliberate intention or wish: Let it be known that I took this course of action against my will.. This also saved me time town Celebrates With Mystery Pumpkins Associated Press – There were pumpkins left on front porches and at front gates, on the front and back steps of a church and all along the … It’s kinda cool,” said employee Bill Coyle. “It’s kinda unique. Throughout the town there’s probably a couple of hundred of …Did you know that Town means the residents of a town: The whole town was upset at the news.. This also saved me time microsoft says McAfee “inaccurate, inflammatory” (Reuters) [...]
[...] Last week on a post that Tony wrote about Digg Fraud one of those who left a comment wrote: “I think it’s been pretty much proven that any traffic a site gets from digg is fleeting and doesn’t translate into long-term traffic.” [...]
[...] Last week on a post that Tony wrote about Digg Fraud one of those who left a comment wrote: “I think it’s been pretty much proven that any traffic a site gets from digg is fleeting and doesn’t translate into long-term traffic.” [...]
[...] If you are not a techie you can go another way -– just hire 3000 people, who will digg stories for you. You won’t believe it but in the world there are millions, who live for less than $100 a month but still have Internet access at work. Pay them 5 cents/digg and they will digg, reddit etc for you anything you like as often as you need. It’s said that some people do it already albeit in smaller scale. [...]
[...] to Tony Hung at Deep Jive Interests, top Diggers are routinely approached by PR types to help promote the companies they represent. As [...]
[...] latest installment that pierces the Digg cash-free democratic veneer is from Deep Jive Interests, putting forth that [...]