Huge Red Flag at Netscape

July 19th, 2006 at 12:42 am

This reminds me of a joke:

A well-dressed man meets an attractive woman at a bar. He propositions her, “Would you be interested in having sex with me for a million dollars?”

The woman thinks for a while. And then says, “For a million dollars? Sure.”

Then the man says, “Actually, I don’t have a million bucks. How about I give you $50.”

The woman becomes indignant and says, “What? $50? Do you think I’m a whore?”

The man retorts smartly, “We already established that. Now we’re just negotiating the price.”

Perhaps the question is now whether Digg users will switch, but at what price.

July 19th, 2006 at 1:09 am

If they also buy “normal” Digg users, I would read Netscape…
How about 100 $ months if I go there read to the news daily ?

July 19th, 2006 at 1:35 am

“Digg’s Achilles heel is that such a small group of active users drives so much of their success.” If this is an Achilles heel for Digg, it is also an Achilles heel for nearly every company in existence. Most companies (internet & non-internet) derive the vast majority of their profits from a small percentage of their consumers. The Pareto Principle or ‘80-20 Rule’ says that for many (but, of course, not all) situations “80% of the consequences stem from 20% of the causes.” Banks for example make the vast majority of their profits from a small percentage of their clients. Which is why those wealthy clients are competed for, catered to, and receive far superior customer service. This isn’t necessarily an Achilles heel to banks, it’s simply a law of nature, a rule of business that they must adapt to. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/80-20_rule
It is well known that 10% of all Wikipedia users make 80% of all edits, yet that is not seen as an Achilles heel to the company’s success. http://www.ccc.de/congress/200.....slides.pdf
If a small group of highly active users is a “problem” for Digg, it will be a “problem” for Netscape and a “problem” for any other site that has a similar user participation model.

July 19th, 2006 at 1:47 am

Digg succeeded because they grew organically and “trained” their users to learn the systems as they got more complicated. However, I think that Digg growth will slow because the new users will find it complicated and cumbersome to use at first glance. At the same time, it might succeed because it has achieved a kind of momentum that keeps it interesting at the surface.

July 19th, 2006 at 2:30 am

It’s a sensible offering really. I am sure people are only moral up to a certain financial point, and i’d bet it’s below $1000/m (on top of what they earn already).

Whether it’ll actually make people move from digg isn’t really relevant, as AOL have a big audience anyway. Bonus.

James

July 19th, 2006 at 2:47 am

PAY people to submit to those sites?! Thats crazy.

“one of the most interesting cultural experiments occuring on the web right now”
not too sure about that, I signed up for Digg, made a few comments, visited it daily then left within a few months and got my account deleted because I was fed up with all the bitching and children on there. It maybe a good idea, but they just need some quality control.

July 19th, 2006 at 3:45 am

I feel that so many people are missing the fundamental point as to how stupid this is.

The top posters at digg are the top posters because of how many stories they submit. Do you understand? I’m sure they’re nice people, but they have no special talent for inserting a link inside a text field.

Their stories reach the front page because of a snowball effect. They submit so many stories in a day, that some of them are going to reach that front page. When those stories do reach the front page, people add them as friends, and get to see all the stories they submit from that point fourth.

Now even more of their stories are reaching the front page.

Calcanis seems to believe that so many of their stories are popular because the finds are so amazing, or perfect for the time, and that these top users have acquired this spectacular skill for doing this.

As I have expained above, this is not the case.

Essentially, Calcanis is paying for users. That’s it. Anyone willing to submit 150-400 stories a day on digg WILL become a top digg user.

This man’s stupidity is beyond words. Does he think people are going to follow where the top digg users go? Of course they won’t! People don’t care who submitted the stories! And if one person doesn’t post it, someone else will.

If these digg users go, they will be replaced, and fast. That’s the natural order of digg, or any kind of site that relies on submissions.

Calcanis is paying for membership, in that the Netscape rip is not getting enough submissions. All he is paying for is submissions, but he has fooled himself into thinking he is paying for “talent”.

He’s paying for link whores. As I posted on digg, he might as well post an ad on Craiglist, to the effect of, “WORK FROM HOME! EARN $$$”. What’s the difference here?

Can I get an amen?

First he tries to buy Amanda (Rocketboom) and now this? This guy is a failure, with money to pay for success, without the vision to know where to find it.

July 19th, 2006 at 4:15 am

The main issue here is that more and more, free (quality) content providers will begin to disappear, as all this stuff matures…

It does not bode well for the business models that depend any particular element of the business equation to be free, and there are far too many of those around.

As for Calcanis, well, he’s now playing with the big boys, and they want fast results. He will either be the star or the fall boy, but this is make-or-break for him…

July 19th, 2006 at 4:49 am

CK, did you REALLY just try to put forth the notion that 24,000 registrations is somehow impressive given the fact that you hijacked a 12 million monthly uniques userbase to launch the ripoff, and accompanied it with a Calacanis P.T. Barnum media extravaganza?

July 19th, 2006 at 5:17 am

Paul, I strongly disagree that it is a stupid idea.

I’ve been blogging since 1999. I love blogging. It’s fun to submit stories to my blog. It’s fun to have readers who respond to what I write. Nevertheless, when Jason and Weblogs, Inc. called me up five years later and offered to start paying me to do what I was already doing on my own for free, I jumped at the chance. It wasn’t just about the money (though making money is nice). It was also about the community and launching off from my little Mac blog that had a nice enough following for a small blog to blogging for The Unofficial Apple Weblog, where I had a larger audience where more people saw what I was writing and took value from it.

With this move, we’re not paying for users of the site. Just like Weblogs, Inc. / Gawker / [Insert Blog Network Here] isn’t paying every single blogger out there. We’re paying for leaders in the space who have some insight into what makes a good story, and these leaders will help guide new users in how to find good stories and how to use the system through their actions.

Several of the Weblogs, Inc bloggers were originally participant fans of our blogs, commenting on stories and adding value to the system. They made themselves visible to us not by posting “First!” in the comments to our blog posts, but by actually showing that they had value to add to the site and the experience.

We’re not going to offer this gig to people who have just submitted the most stories or pay people a dollar to avoid dupes. That’s not the point of this idea. We’re going to look for the people who have the insight and editorial sense to pick the right stories and to find stories that the community will find interesting. Not everyone can do that and do that well.

Todd: yes, I did and I stand by it… although I wouldn’t characterize it the way you just did.

July 19th, 2006 at 5:42 am

C.K., you’re misunderstood about what you’re paying for. The top users on digg are not top users because of their editorial sense, because of a skill they have acquired. They simply are the top users because of the amount of stories they submit.

You think you’re paying for talent. You are not. I urge you to look into this a little more, before you guys make complete fools of yourselves.

I provided a well enough explanation as to how users on digg become top users, and why they stay there. I suggest you read it again.

July 19th, 2006 at 5:57 am

It is going to take a lot more than $1000/month to get me to jump ship on digg. I honestly don’t know that you could put a price on it. The people that use digg are where the real value is for me.

Mike, I think you’re right about AOL’s dissatisfaction with their new netscape beta. Their Alexa stats seem to provide support for your assertion as well. You can see the blip in June from when they released the beta:

http://www.alexa.com/data/deta.....tscape.com

July 19th, 2006 at 6:07 am

Dossy - that’s funny but come to think of it, a lot of stupid ideas became millions if not billions of dollars worth.

A million dollar worth of assets is better than a million lines of bashing…

July 19th, 2006 at 6:09 am

Scott Karp at publishing 2.0 has a very different take on 2 things:
1) He says the netscape play as still having a chance at ‘winning’ by focusing on ‘average people’

2) He says we really shouldn’t be hyping digg as a social media ‘revolution’ - its just a different group of editors (which Mike admits to above)

More on my post here

July 19th, 2006 at 6:18 am

Your quote “It is going to take a lot more than $1000/month to get me to jump ship on digg.” has basically confirmed Mark Devlin’ joke in the comments above, and you are basically negotiating the price now.

Maybe your banking on that your pseudo declaration of allegiance to Digg might raise the price, or get a ‘under the counter’ counteroffer from Digg.

I say let’s wait and see how this plays out…it can really go either way.

July 19th, 2006 at 6:25 am

$1000.. not bad, i’ll just post at both sites!

July 19th, 2006 at 6:31 am

LOL!

Have you seen reddit’s logo today?

There’s also a top story saying the founders are leaving to join Netscape, but I have a feeling that this is sarcasm

July 19th, 2006 at 6:34 am

“Maybe your banking on that your pseudo declaration of allegiance to Digg might raise the price, or get a ‘under the counter’ counteroffer from Digg.”

An under the counter offer? BloodJunkie is not a voluntary employee at digg. He’s a member, a user, a contributor. You don’t pay for users, unless you’re Netscape, it would seem.

The whole idea is ludicrous. All of this paid blogging stuff (and there’s nothing wrong with that) certainly has blurred the lines, and when you reach the point when you’re willing to pay for members, it makes me wonder when they’ll start paying for readers!

You know, the $1 per submission idea should be gold to Calcanis. $1,000 will buy you 1,000 submissions.

July 19th, 2006 at 6:42 am

I think it’s great that active members in a community can be paid for their contributions, especially if the contributions generate revenue. This is no different than hiring a writer to write stories for your site.

The active members of Digg who represent a significant portion of the traffic generating submissions should get a cut of the pie. Consider ad revenue sharing on submitted stories, or a plain and simple monthly PayPal dump (the Calacanis method), or based on number of merits, (.05 a digg) on your stories.

Haha, anyways, I think it’s great that Calacanis recognizes the importance of active participation. Who cares if Netscape is an injured uncle of a company, and who cares if they succeed? I don’t understand why people would be so pessimistic about the entire affair. Is it because you weren’t offered money?

July 19th, 2006 at 6:49 am

Paul, I’m not misundertanding what you’re saying, but I think you’re misunderstanding what we mean when we say “top” users. This isn’t like we’re just going to look at a user and go “Hey, cool you posted 400 stories. You’re in!” We’re actually going to evaluate what type of stories, how many, how many made it to the top, etc and make a judgment call on whether the person is a good fit for the position or not.

As Jason points out, the offer to apply is open to the top 50 or so users of any of these sites, but we’re limiting the number of Navigators to a dozen or so hires. Not all applicants will be accepted. We will most likely find that people closer to #50 than to #1 on the top list of users on these sites are actually the ones with the talent and magic we need.

July 19th, 2006 at 6:56 am

Blong > I’m glad someone is choosing not to be as alarmist as the above article and is instead seeing sense.

I’m not sure how many of Digg’s top users are aware that, effectively, they are working for Digg for free. Perhaps the satisfaction of being a loyal user is enough for them, but when Digg is enjoying as much success and growth as they are, a warm feeling of satisfaction is an extremely low reward for providing what is essentially the cornerstone of Digg (links and activity). Digg and all socially-driven sites rely on their users. Whilst arguably the distribution of contribution is quite even, it’s way more skewed and way more public on Digg.

We have people submitting link upon link a day and amassing tens of thousands of dugg articles - that’s serious time spent in front of the screen.

Who knows if these people aren’t actually employed by Digg already, but for the massive contribution they make, there should be some kind of reward. It’s not like Digg is being run out of some 18-year old’s parent’s basement - it’s a company with employees.

If Digg feels it necessary to retain users who have made a significant contribution to the company, then what is the problem?

If Netscape feels that it can reward users better for their time, then what is the problem?

People are acting as if Netscape is attempting to buy users. Incorrect. Netscape are looking to hire contributors.

July 19th, 2006 at 7:02 am

One thing about the 24,000 registrations. At least half of them registered in order to complain about the new site (based on complaints they made).

I managed to land several stories on the main page, and the traffic was not that impressive (7,200 uniques) over a few days. I don’t think Netscape had much bulk to begin with.

You can tell there are barely any stories in the system.

July 19th, 2006 at 7:17 am

As a former Netscape employee I find the entire episode embarrassing. It is just one more example of how AOL is just flailing. I’m sure Google is second guessing their big investment in AOL last year. Ouch!

July 19th, 2006 at 8:06 am

AOL should have moved to broadband back when dial-up was going out of style. After the trouble I had cancelling AOL 8 years ago, they get what they deserve. And I’m with Duncan — I thought Netscape went out of business years ago? I guess AOL + Netscape = -2 (the death of two companies).

I’m all for competition and innovation, not imitation… If a company wants to compete with Digg, then innovate - don’t copy them and then offer to “buy” their users! When a company pays the users to use their service or product, what’s that say about them? It says that people will only tolerate it for compensation…

July 19th, 2006 at 8:14 am

Wonder what the TOS for that deal would be? It would be simple enough to double submit the stories under an alias AND walk away with $1k for doing it…

July 19th, 2006 at 8:23 am

LOL!

Have you seen the reddit header today?

They don’t seem to be too worried — a link to Jason’s blog is even on the front page.

I think the link to it already got taken off of Digg’s frontpage, but I think the diggnation seems to be reacting similarly.

July 19th, 2006 at 8:30 am

Amazing to see the Netscape name be tarnished by a one-hit joker whom AOL handed the reigns over to.

July 19th, 2006 at 8:37 am

“You don’t have to like netscape.com but ripping on it for paying contributors is silly.”

They’re paying for members, users. The nature of their site is for users to contribute, and share with the community. That’s the bottom line.

This is the very definition of desperation.