Comments on: Is submitting things to Digg “work”?

By: Eric Berlin

Eric Berlin — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 00:56:01 +0000

I always circle back to the notion of a “value proposition” — there’s got to be a win-win for both sides to make for a successful online community of any sort. This may or may not involve cash compensation — I’d argue that in the vast majority of cases cash doesn’t make sense or is unworkable. I think netscape’s experiment is both interesting and unique i.e. Calacanis has money to play around with obviously.

At Blogcritics, there’s no way that we could pay our 1,700 writer/bloggers. However, we think what we do offer — writing mentorship (who else does that for “mere” bloggers?), editing of feature-length pieces, thousands of free review materials, exposure to a far larger audience, entry to a pretty cool community and the untold opportunities that brings, Google juice and traffic for home sites, etc. etc. — is pretty great and has been the fuel to a grassroots phenomenon based upon not a dime of investment cash.

Overall, I find myself ambivalent like you, Mathew. And for some reason I bristle a bit at Rose’s notion of the absolutely organic process where users submit and vote for stories simply because “they want to.” That doesn’t really mean anything, in my view. Everyone outside of prison walls does things because they want to.

By: Mathew Ingram

Mathew Ingram — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 15:25:03 +0000

Thanks for the comment, Savio. I actually just found your post through a pingback and commented on it (and have linked to it above). I think you might be right, and that the idea of a core group of paid users as a “maven trap” is an interesting one. I still wonder whether there isn’t something lost when users are paid though — whether it doesn’t change the whole tone of the endeavour. Perhaps I’m just naieve :-)

By: Savio Rodrigues

Savio Rodrigues — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 15:14:48 +0000

Hi Mathew,

If we apply lessons from the open source world, then paying the top 1% of contributors is similar to hiring/paying the core developers on an open source project. And we all know that this is the route that mature open source projects follow.

I just blogged about this here. I think it comes down to the balance of capital invested vs. capital returned. For the top contributors, they expend a lot more capital then they receive. For the average contributor, they receive more capital then they expend. I’d suggest this is true for open source projects and for Netscape/Digg.

So, maybe Netscape isn’t too far off.

By: Mathew Ingram

Mathew Ingram — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 14:57:38 +0000

Thanks for the comment, Rob. Boy, I hope you can keep up this kind of pace when you get back to work :-)

I would have to disagree with your comments about Flickr though — I think a lot of people do go there to see other people’s pictures, not just to share their own (I know I do), and in many cases it is the non-professional ones I like the best, or at least the ones I assume are non-professional, since the line between professional and non-professional is becoming increasingly blurry (which I guess is part of what we’re talking about in a way).

By: robhyndman.com » Blog Archive » Paying Diggers - Once More, into the Breach

Thu, 14 Sep 2006 13:29:20 +0000

[...] Mathew and I have had a running debate on this of late. His post on the story is here, and I’ve jumped into the fray with some comments there, too. Mathew notes that “it’s not always about dollars”. I think that’s true, but I also don’t think anyone’s saying that it is. The issue, it seems to me, is whether it’s OK to pay top contributors, not whether contributors “always” have to be paid. I think the right question is whether paying top contributors to an aggregator like Digg produces an interesting, vibrant community. And as to the question Mathew asks – is contributing “work” (I think the right question is whether being a top contributor is work) – I think there’s a simple answer to it. Would Kevin Rose be a top contributor for free? Related Posts [...]