Jason Calacanis’ Latest Link Bait Works

If anyone can acquire links in a short period of time, it is [tag]Jason Calacanis[/tag], currently Entrepreneur in Action at Sequoia Capital, what is that exactly Jason? Former editor and CEO at Silicon Alley Reporter, he co-founded Weblogs, Inc with Brian Alvey, which they then sold to AOL, where Jason became GM of Netscape. I’ve talked about Netscape and Jason before, first when he decided to create Netscape Navigators and pay them $1,000 a month, then when Kevin Rose weighed in on the paid posting and another when I decided Jason was right, Netscape was doing good, better even, not a lot of spam, and I even had a front pager myself a couple times.

Okay, back on topic, Jason has posted a link baiting rules article, where he tells everyone how to get a link back from him from Calacanis.com. This is a link that would probably be helpful, a page rank 7 home page, Alexa ranking approaching 10,000, even though he has talked about how easy it is to game Alexa, so, about any of his posts would be good to get a link from, although the best spot is probably in the blogroll. So, this is definitely worth pursuing, even if it is for our own personal reasons, such as SEO. He already has 37 sites linking to the link bait post, with more coming in, and all of the other links you get when other blogs link to a post, so it works, big time, if you are Jason that is, if I posted it, I would probably dropped by Google again, hehe.

I have never hung out with him, but I predict we will sometime in the future, not sure where or when, but we will, first round is on me Jason, the rest are on you. You are absolutely right about Kara Swisher, that was the only post I read, the one that you linked to, but I will be back to read some more.

Added: Okay, finally removed my link to his link baiting rules, if he’s not linking back to me then neither am I.

Posted by Jimmy Daniels Posted in: Linking Strategies, Netscape No Comments » April 2007

Jason Calacanis Leaving AOL

It’s official, [tag]Jason Calacanis[/tag] is leaving AOL, and after reading his post about Jim Miller, I would say it is largely because of his departure as well, although it could just be an easy time to say adios. This appears to be big news in the blogosphere, posts are all over the place about it, Jason, in case you didn’t already know built Weblogs, Inc, into a multi million dollar operation that includes Engadget and many other high traffic blogs, that was bought for about 25 million by AOL. Jason had no agreement that meant he had to stay, so the year he put in at AOL was of his own free will, and leaving now will not cost him a cent, other than his normal salary, I guess.

It is being covered by the NYTimes,

Jason Calacanis, the outspoken blogger and entrepreneur who ran AOL’s Netscape division, resigned on Thursday in the wake of the firing of AOL’s chief executive, Jonathan Miller.

Mr. Calacanis sold his company, Weblogs Inc., a network of blogs, to AOL last year and continued to run it from offices in Santa Monica, Calif. This year he took over Netscape.com, transforming it from a Web portal into a site that lets users vote and comment on news articles. Source: NYTimes

.

It is being covered by Techcrunch, who first broke the story,

We just heard from a source that Jason Calacanis has resigned from AOL. Jason joined AOL just over a year ago when his startup, Weblogs, Inc., was acquired. Most recently, he took over management of Netscape, which relaunched earlier this year as a Digg-like news portal.

I just spoke to Jason briefly on IM - his response as of now is “no comment”. He also spoke to me off the record but that’s, well, off the record. Source: TechCrunch

Jason confirmed it on his blog,

TechCrunch broke the story (less than two hours after I told everyone here), and the New York Times confirmed it with me by phone this afternoon.

I’ve got a lot to say, but I’m thinking that I’ll just talk about it on the final episode of the Gillmor Gang podcast–which we happen to be doing tomorrow (crazy coincidence I know). Source: Jason Calacanis

Valleywag has had several posts about Jason quitting,

Jason Calacanis, the energetic and annoying publishing entrepreneur who once thought he could rise to the top at AOL, is leaving the internet media company. He’s not commenting on the record, but his blog describes Jonathan Miller, ousted CEO of AOL, as his mentor, and Miller’s departure as a sad day. He’s out.

Calacanis first came to notoriety as an internet promoter in the late 1990s as the founder of Silicon Alley Reporter, a print magazine which fulfilled in New York the same role as Silicon Valley’s Red Herring. At the height of the boom, Calacanis brushed off a rumored $30m offer for the title by Time Inc., though accounts of that approach vary. Source: Valleywag

Beet.tv had an article on it, but they covered a different angle,

If AOL is smarting from Jason’s departure, they still have their superstar blogger Peter Rojas, Editor in Chief of Engadget, which is ranked the world’s number one or two blog by Technorati. I saw Peter tonight at the TechCrunch party in New York City. He confirmed he’s staying with AOL.

Peter was a big part of the acquisition of the Calacanis blog network, which I understand netted some $25 million from AOL. Source: Beet.tv

They will certainly miss Jason, he is one of those go getters who doesn’t understand the word fail, much like Thomas Edison, he just finds ways that it hasn’t worked yet, until he hits the right solution. But, since AOL retained Peter Rojas, regarded by some as the number one blogger because of Engadget, they will not loose anything there, although, I am sure he will take some of the Weblogs bloggers with him, you know he will. Wonder what will happen to Netscape now and who will take over for him and what will it mean to all of the Netscape Navigators, the ones they are paying to promote the community?

Posted by Jimmy Daniels Posted in: AOL, Blogging, Netscape, Paid Blogging 2 Comments » November 2006

Can You Digg It?

Wow. Things certainly are jumping in social town, looks like some digg users are jumping ship, some people are happy, some sad, what’s going on you ask? Looks to me like people are getting fed up with the way digg works.

For those that don’t know, Digg is a sort of news site, where users sign up and post links to news, blogs, whatever they run across on the internet, and other users can vote and comment on the articles. If a story is dugg by enough users, it will make it to front page and can receive lots of traffic, enough traffic that it takes some sites down, because they can’t handle the load, much like the Slashdot effect of being listed on slashdot.com. The whole idea is to get people involved, reading and commenting on stories, like a big community around the water cooler, where it goes wrong is the whole friends thing. People add each other as friends and digg each others stories, so a small group can control lots of the content by submitting stories and voting on them, which in turn gets them quickly to the front page where they are seen by large numbers of users who also vote on their favorites. This is what is being complained about in these posts, Digg the rigged? A closer look at Digg’s democratic model,

What does this say about Digg? It means a small ‘aristocracy’ controls the vast majority of the content that gets on Digg, and it means that every day it gets harder and harder for new users to have any kind of an impact. I think Digg made a fatal flaw by adding their friend system because it turned Digg into more of a popularity contest than it did into who has the most quality content. But, it also shows Digg is a true democracy. And like a true democracy, the crowds making the decisions tend to not make the best choices en-masse, and it follows the saying, ‘the richer get richer and the poorer get poorer’.

An article forevergeek, Digg Corrupted: Editor’s Playground, not User-Driven Website,

Digg as an idea is fantastic. As a system of disseminating news without having to wait for editors it is amazing. But it seems to be suffering from a power complex. The two articles we originally mentioned were obviously promoted to the front page in an artificial manager.. Our website getting banned was obviously in retaliation to our story. Their entire philosophy now feels shallow and false - the editors decidedly put those two articles to the front page, just like they decidedly removed us from their system. Users may have originally driven the website, but it looks like that ideal is nothing more than a nice idea in the past.

One from Slashdot, Growing Censorship Concerns at Digg, which itself has had similar trouble and accusations,

I find site rivalries boring, but growing concerns over Digg “censorship” have been submitted steadily for the last few months. Today two such stories were submitted so numerous that I had little choice but to post. The first claims that Digg is the editor’s playground- it explains how a few users control Digg, and that it’s not really the ‘Democracy’ that they claim it to be. Personally I think this is all totally within the rights of their editors to choose content however they like. But it’s less pleasant when combined with accounts getting banned for posting content critical of digg, and watching other content getting removed for being critical of sponsors (also, here is Kevin Rose’s reply).

Many digg posts on the subject, including this one, Digg Censors Stories That Offend Sponsors

This is purely that the users have reported the story as inaccurate or lame, not censorship by the Digg management. I think the real problem here on Digg is that a core of users have banded together to promote their own “party line”, so to speak. I’ve noticed that the same people seem to vote for each others posts time and time again, and almost in the same order. Very strange. It’s like a Digg Mafia underlying the community. I’m waiting for the horses head to appear next to me in bed just for saying this in public!

Michael Arrington of Techcrunch adds, Troubles in Diggville,

To some this is troubling because it removes the supposedly democratic nature of Digg. Unlike newspapers like the New York Times, where a small group of editors decide what is “news” and therefore included in the paper, Digg is a more meritocritous and democratic process where the readers actually decide what is newsworthy. If Digg is being corrupted by a relatively small group of users, the difference between Digg and the NYT becomes less clear.

Others respond that these groups are just very hard core Digg users that spend much of their day scouring the web for good stories to promote on Digg. Digg ranks users based on how successful their submitted stories become, and a handful of users are hyper-competitive about their Digg ranking. The argument is that these users are simply more proficient at finding stories.

Kevin Rose responds to all of this with this digg post, Gaming Digg / New Changes from this site Digg Friends,

That said, today we read a couple blog posts that highlight users digging each others stories. This is something we encourage through our friends features and will continue to expand as digg evolves. It is our goal to create a platform in which you can share and promote news that is important to you. What is changing however is how we are handling story promotion. While we don’t disclose exactly how story promotion works (to prevent gaming the system), I can say that a key update is coming soon. This algorithm update will look at the unique digging diversity of the individuals digging the story. Users that follow a gaming pattern will have less promotion weight. This doesn’t mean that the story won’t be promoted, it just means that a more diverse pool of individuals will be need to deem the story homepage-worthy.

I’m sure this will probably help the system a little bit, but they probably need to rethink the whole friend thing, as well as posting the most popular users list. Some people will do whatever it takes to become number one, on any system. The same problem exists at Netscape.com, friends digging friends stories, heck, if I didn’t recruit some and vote for their stories, some of my stories would never get any attention, since lots of users, I’m assuming, mainly visit the front page and friends profiles to vote for stories.

What is really interesting about this article, is it caused the #1 digg user, p9s50W5k4GUD2c6, to say he is quitting,

I ignored Digg’s ice-cold level of support during the Netscape transition. Instead I stayed with Digg - for nothing.
I ignored Jay’s jack-ass condescending T-Shirt comment.
I ignored the misbegotten algorithm you all put in place shortly after that that made it MISERABLY hard for any user to get to the front page (which is a big factor in this whole issue)
I overlooked all the red ink about I/we were FOOLS to digg so hard for you - the 60 Million Dollar Man.
I overlooked the Trademark fiasco and the treatment of Digg’s users
I overlooked this: http://digg.com/music/EMI_in_free_music_downloads_deal and
But I will NOT overlook your tacit equation of BUSTING MY ASS for Digg with gaming.

As a direct result of your blog this evening. I will no longer no supporting Digg going forward. I bequeath my measly number one position to whoever wants to reign.

I don’t know about busting his ass, I mean, come on, all it requires is getting a feed reader, listing all of the big news sites feeds so you can watch them, and monitoring of news sites like techmeme, memorandum and others, and submitting and digging or voting stories like crazy. I have been involved in the Netscape community lately and it pretty much works the same way, except for the fact that the pin stories at the top of the page, probably the only reason for my only front page story, which would have eventually been popular because of the subject, but it would’ve been someone else submitting and getting their friends to vote for it. That story has almost 1000 comments, so you know it would’ve been popular no matter who submitted it. As for other posts, it is hard to get stories listed because so many are submitting so many stories, if the story is older than 10 or 15 minutes, you are probably out of luck.

Another interesting post at digg, Top Digg Users Remove Avatars in Protest and Support of p9,

Why don’t they protest in a different, more effective way- say- never post again?

We’d all be better off without each one of them spamming us with 50 articles a day that we’d get anyways. The only difference would be that the really deserving ones would make it to the front page instead of all their crap.

Lot of people are aggravated with the top users, is it jealousy, or is it they can’t work the system in the same way, or just because they feel left out, since they can’t get people to vote for their stories? Probably all of the above, I’m sure people want to see digg fail, and people want to see it get bigger and better. You have to take everything with a grain of salt, as you don’t really know what their motivations are.

Jason Calacanis weighs in, digg top users protest (or, “one user, one vote–that’s the rule),for those who don’t know, he runs Netscape, a digg “clone” that has hired some of the top diggers away,

It is so clear that the top 1% of social bookmarkers are so talented that they should do it for a living. That’s why we started our Netscape Navigators program which pays top social bookmarkers. Right now it’s just a part-time job for folks, but in another year or two I bet we have people doing this full-time all over the place. We watched this happen in blogging from 2003 to 2006.

It’s not really that difficult of a job, you just needs lots of friends and the time to submit and vote on lots of stories, I was a top Netscape user, according to their front page, in less than a day, and that was just one homepage story out of about 10 or so. But, I think we will see some full timers, users like Neophile, who actually contribute and make it easier, stand out in my mind. Check this article out, where he actually created a “tool” to help submit articles from feeds to Netscape. Jason did also take a second to invite the top digg user to contact him about finding a spot for him at Netscape. Always a self promoter that Jason.

So, what is the solution, and can there really be a good solution? When you get groups of people doing stuff, it can always get out of hand, as it appears to have at digg. digg is the first big site of it’s kind, I’m sure with the big number of users that they are working hard to make it better, or at least make it better until he can sell it, hehe. I think they need to adjust the whole friends idea, maybe not let you see who submitted it until you digg it, or make it impossible to vote for users posts from their profile, make them actually find the stories, if they aren’t emailing or instant messaging them to each other already. They should also rethink the whole top contributor thing, take the whole competition factor out of it by keeping it internal, that way, only the admins know who the top users are, and maybe point them out in some other way. Lets hope the changes that digg is making is a good start.

Here is a Photo of a digg user digging stories at about one every 1.5 seconds, think he is reading everyone, or just voting friends stories?

Posted by Jimmy Daniels Posted in: Digg, Netscape, Social Networks 1 Comment » September 2006

It’s Official Jason Calacanis Was Right

Okay, I’ve officially changed my mind, [tag]Jason Calacanis[/tag] was right. Originally, I didn’t think the offer, as it has become known, was a good idea. In a nutshell, he offered to pay $1,000 a month for “social bookmarking” rights. Put in at least 150 stories a month and they’ll pay you $12,000 a year. I thought it would cause a lot of people to start submitting stories to get noticed and figured it would gum up the system with people posting the same urls over and over. I don’t see that happening, so these sites duplicate story detection and voting mechanisms are doing their jobs so far.

I have been watching Netscape and the participation is increasing, the number of stories is increasing, the number of Netscape users submitting stories is probably increasing, members like Tim Loftis really stepped up to the plate and convinced Jason to hire Netscape users earlier than he figured he would.

Voting, comments, and a number of other factors have doubled (or tripled) over the past two weeks at Netscape since we hired our first 10 Navigators. These folks are doing an AMAZING job of not only putting in good stories, but they are building the community by *teaching* and *showing* folks how to be good citizens on a social bookmarking site. That is really what this is about, training folks on how to be members of the community and truth be told I’ve learned a lot from the Navigators and Benkler on that subject–it is the key.

I like the direction Netscape is going in and have decided to contribute more there myself, Digg is the big site, but you have to deal with trolls on every post. I realize not everyone agrees with everything, but come on, I’ve always believed that if you don’t have anything good and constructive to say, then you shouldn’t say it. So, Jason has won me over as well.

Posted by Jimmy Daniels Posted in: Netscape, Paid Blogging, Social Networks 1 Comment » September 2006

Digg Stats Post Calacanis

Here is what I have been figuring would happen ever since [tag]Jason Calacanis[/tag] made his offer to the top submitters at sites like Digg and Reddit. Just read an article on the Web 2.0 Explorer blog by Richard MacManus about the Digg Trends blog, that studied the user trends before and after the Jason Calacanis offer. The questions they tried to answer were these:

1. What is the real contribution of top 100 users?
2. Who took Jason’s (Netscape) Offer?
3. How did the user statistics changed after July 18th (Jason’s Offer)?
4. How many dig users are really contributing?
5. What is the real contribution of top 100 users?

Since the launch of digg, Kevin Rose says “As of right now there are 444,809 registered digg users. Since launch there have been 38,848 popular homepage stories, of which 11,943 were from the ‘Top 100′. That means historically less than 1/3 of homepage stories come from the ‘Top 100′”. But how do the numbers go now? It looks like the top users are contributing more and more.

From our database, for the period of 6/19/2006 9:31:28 PM to 7/30/2006 4:41:34 PM a total of 6013 stories were promoted to front page of these

top 10 users contributed 1792 i.e. 29.8%
top 100 contributed 3324 stories i.e. 55.28% (which is again what exactly SEOMOZ reported)

This clearly shows the shift from the Kevin Rose reported numbers from 26.8% to 55.28%; top users are contributing more & more to digg.

As per Jason Martinez (and Calacanis points in his blog) 60% of Digg’s front page is the top 0.03% users.

That is to be expected, the more friends the top users have, the more people you get following their stories, which means more diggs for those stories, so those stories are in front of peoples eyeballs more, etc, etc.

When Jason first made the offer, I expected digg users to start submitting more stories to get noticed so they could get a hot at the $1,000 a month offered by Jason. I also expected there to be lots more duplicate stories posted as each user wanted to be the one to make it to the home page. Not sure if there is a stat that shows duplicate posts, but I’ll look for one. The number of stories has gone up a lot, though.

Looks like many have realized the value of being a top user and probably are aiming for Netscape money. Statistics clearly reflects this, below are the top 20 users before and after (i.e. 2006-07-19) sorted by total submitted stories.

You can see the difference; many non-regular users started submitting a whole lot of stories. The users marked in red are new users (who has not submitted any story before). It is weird to note that infonote user has submitted a total of 428 stories but still has none of his submitted stories is promoted to front page (Sorry to point that infonote, I will sure digg your story when I see next.).

You’ll have to go to the Digg Trends page to see the comparison, I won’t duplicate it here. But, there has definitely been a big jump in posts, it will probably continue until they get tired of trying or Jason quits “hiring” users.

The other day there were 4 Netscape Navigators already, I was going to check and see if they added anymore, but I can’t get to the Netscape website for some reason, it appears down to me. Jason said he did not pick any Netscape users because he wanted users who had been doing it for six months and no one at Netscape could’ve been doing it that long, since they just started. I would say that probably ticked off some of his top users, but I’ve been wrong many times before. I still wonder what BloodJunkie is doing, he said in an email to Mark Glaser on pbs.org that he was going to try out the money. But he’s still digging away on digg and did not answer one of my comments the other day, so I don’t know for sure if any high profile users have jumped ship or not.

Added: Jason just posted about this diggtrends article and said,

The folks at DiggTrends also want to know who we hired as Navigators… we’ll announce that later today. I think we have three of the top 20 DIGG users (and two from the top 10!). We also hired from Newsvine, delicious, and Reddit top users. I really hope this model works and we can grow from 12 paid Navigators to 100! It’s really up to the 12 folks we hire to make things happen

The thing about the whole digg/netscape thing is, digg has thousands of people digging stories, whether they submit any or not, that’s why they have so many diggs compared to the number of votes Netscape articles get.

Posted by Jimmy Daniels Posted in: Blogging, Digg, Netscape, Social Networks No Comments » August 2006

In This Corner…

In the latest round of free publicity for [tag]Jason Calacanis[/tag] and Netscape, Kevin Rose has responded to the Everybody’s Gotta Eat post where he said he was going to pay 12 diggers, Reddit users, newsvine users, etc, $1000 a month for doing what they do now, submitting stories they find on the net. He even mentions it in the latest diggnation, their podcast. Jason thinks he Has won the debate because Kevin “attacks” him in the podcast.

Where to start. First, Kevin, you should really rethink the diggnation podcasts, getting drunk and talking about diggs sounds like a lot of fun, but all I remember thinking is why am I watching this? A buncha young guys getting drunk and talking about digg posts? I’m sure loads of diggers watch them, hey they are going to be drunk anyway, may as well drink with Kevin, one of their hero’s right? In the latest podcast, they mention the Calacanis post offering to pay users to submit stories, in it they refer to Jason as Satan, AOL sucks, Netscape as a browser, not a website, throw out some numbers about the top digg users that sound made up, and say that AltaVista is cooler than Netscape.com. I couldn’t even watch the whole podcast. Anyway, if you are going to respond to challenges, you need to do it a different way, otherwise all you are doing is giving them more free coverage.

Jason shoots back like he has been attacked,

On the latest DIGG Nation, in minute 8, Digg co-fonder Kevin Rose goes on a massive attack of my plans to hire a dozen top social bookmarkers, but he doesn’t seem to have a point about it. I’d actually be interested in hearing what he thinks about paying folks to do social bookmarking, but instead he just personally attacks me.

This is a serious discussion and I’m saddened that Kevin has reduced it to personal attacks. At the very least he could have a serious discussion about it *AFTER* he attacks me.*

Jason, I would hardly call it attacked, to me it looked like just a bunch of young punks drinking and running their mouths, nothing to get worked up over. The more I think about it, the more I like the paid submission idea, but maybe you should’ve just tried to get some of your existing users to submit better stories and do it the hard way. I know it would’ve taken a lot longer and paying users from other sites is certainly getting more traffic for now, but it will die out, and you know you will have some users leave Netscape and proclaim they infiltrated the “enemy camp” and it sucks or something similar, causing more bad publicity. You can still build a better Netscape site, but you should do it from the inside and not pull users from other sites in hopes of claiming some of their users. Do everything right on your end and it will get bigger, like you said, there is room for all these sites and Netscape.

On his blog Kevin Rose adds,

Clever PR stunt, but man, in the end I believe it’s going to do more damage for Netscape than good. Ya see users like Digg, Del.icio.us, Reddit and Flickr because they are contributing to true, free, democratic social platforms devoid of monetary motivations. All users on these sites are treated equally, there aren’t anchors, navigators, explorers, opera-ers, or editors. Jason, I know AOL has given you access to their war-chest, but honestly, take that money and invest it into site development. Listen to your existing community. Think of what your loyal Netscape users must think - you’re essentially telling them that they aren’t good enough and that you have to buy better users. You can have the best submitters in the world, but if your community doesn’t support you it will never work.

Kevin, you should’ve have left it at this, without the diggnation podcast, seriously, or, not even responded at all, and let the users tell him how they feel. But, you are correct, he is telling his users that others are better, and even if you have the top 100 stories everyday, if no one is there to read them and vote for them, it doesn’t matter. I’ve read some of the topics over there and lots of people are unhappy about the new Netscape, wonder how many users they have lost?

Oh, and Jason goes on to say Kevin is trying to keep all the money for himself while he is trying to spread it around. There is a basic difference in both these individuals, Jason works for AOL, Kevin works for himself, now I know both have money, but Jason has deeper pockets to put his hands in and it is obvious they want to make money of the social bookmarking craze, while digg started out on it’s on and has built up almost a half of a million users. The best way for the creators of digg to make money is by selling out to Yahoo or someone, but it is possible that could kill the site, if the new owners make to many changes.

Anyway, it will be fun to see how this plays out. Lots more blog posts to read and see what others are saying.

In a post by Mark Glaser on pbs.org, it looks like the digg user BloodJunkie may be jumping ship. I have seen a couple comments from him on other blogs stating that from him it was about community, blah, blah, blah, but now, in an email to Glaser he admits he will be trying the money.

I love Digg. I believe Digg has the potential to change the way all media is aggregated. Through Digg I have met a large number of kind, bright people. I can’t put a price on those contacts. That being said, after taking a day to let it sink in, I am at the point where I am considering pursuing the offer. I really appreciate that someone is recognizing the value we Diggers, Flickrers and Redditers add to the online world. And that potential for more networking opportunities is very appealing to me.

I must admit, until now I haven’t given that much credit to myself for what I am doing on Digg. I give all credit to the authors of the content I link to. Obviously whatever value I have added to the online world would be nothing without them.

I have been aware for a while that sites like Digg and Flickr are making millions off of users like me, so I have been considering possible ways to share that wealth among contributors. I think of all the ways you could go (pay per post, ad revenue share, etc.), Jason may have the best idea with the monthly flat rate. If he is convinced that he will get a return on that investment, then it is a win-win.

Someone he knows probably said hey, moron, take the money, what has digg done for you? Not to say he’s a moron, just trying to use my best “buddy” voice. Money talks and BloodJunkie walks.

Also wanted to add on about a post I read at Valleywag the other day called, Escaping Siberia: How Netscape’s boss exploits controversy and paid users in which the author says Jason is creating controversy just so he can get a better job at AOL. Which makes sense given this statement from Susan Mernit, a former Netscape employee.

AOL’s never made the commitment to Netscape as a brand [...] instead, every 18 months they’ve handed it over to some impatient executive who doesn’t realize–yet–he’s being sent to the high-class version of corporate Siberia–where, if he slays the dragon, they might let him come back and run something they consider really important.

In other words, Netscape is just a testing ground for execs, and being put in charge is almost an insult. But Jason, eager to prove his worth at AOL, refuses to sit and slowly bleed away the brand like his predecessors. He knows that while a mild failure will just waste his time, a spectacular failure is almost as good as a success.

Posted by Jimmy Daniels Posted in: Blogging, Digg, Netscape, Social Networks 1 Comment » July 2006

Everyone’s Gotta Eat

This is the latest idea from [tag]Jason Calacanis[/tag], paying the top users at Digg, Delicious, Reddit, Flickr, Myspace, and Newsvine $1000 a month to submit 150 or more stories a month as Netscape Navigators, doing the same thing they are doing now. He says if they don’t share the wealth with the top users they will be lost to startups that will identify them and buy their time.

We’re gonna identify these people in our system as “Netscape Navigators,” and they will work with our full-time “Netscape Anchors” to build a community. I see a day when we have the eight full-time Anchors working with two dozen Navigators to keep the site fresh and clean (hmm… I think I need a better choice of words here).

Now, I’m all for people making money at what they like to do, lord knows I’ve spent enough time in my recliner doing what I like, but wouldn’t this corrupt the whole process? Wouldn’t this just cause more users to post more stories in the hopes of getting picked up and paid to do it somewhere else, clogging up those sites more and more with users trying to have the one story that gets pushed to the top, each submitting duplicate stories, changing titles and descriptions, etc, etc. And if each site ends up paying these users, I can see the same users trying to “work” at each site to increase their income.

I guess we will see in time, because people will take them up on their offer, whether it is good or bad for these types of sites remains to be seen.

Posted by Jimmy Daniels Posted in: Blogging, Netscape, Paid Blogging 3 Comments » July 2006