Calacanis will never pay someone who bought their account - he’s after the people who are prolific posters, not the accounts themselves.

Something I find even more valuable are YouTube channels. There are a couple of kids who are very influencial on youtube and have manage to get hundreds of thousands of views and more importantly channel subscribers. I even went about offering some money for an account in the top ten who only has one video uploaded.

Such transactions are inevitable, and if conducted privately, smart for buyer and seller. That this was conducted publicly was a mistake.

:LOL,

hmmmm……Perhaps some of those companies who’s Websites have gotten to the Digg HOMEPAGE - because of being Digg-ed by Top users - might want to place a bid

Yes, but soon when the auction end Digg will turn off that account.

I think this is a bold crazy move. I really dont think calacanis or anyone for that matter will buy it.

As the folks at MR say, markets in everything.

The bid is up to $75 now (7pm CST). I don’t understand why should Digg turn off that account. If the users want to cash in on their linking behavior, they should allow it.

Dedicated users whom Digg claims are not in for the money will never sell out. This may be perhaps the perfect test even better than Netscape’s attempts to buy off prolific users.

Who the hell would want that? I go to digg, love the site and always watch diggnation. I submit stories but mostly go to the site to find some stories.

Your forgetting that this user has friends - http://digg.com/users/Geekforl.....befriended

This means that if someone were to buy this account and use it to promote content, it would be picked up by these people. 44 users is more than enough to get a frontpage digg. Chances are its only good for 1 or two front pages until everyone ignores this account of Digg deletes it.

Seth Godin says that if a “sneezer” “sells out” he/she loses all credibility and people stop listening.

I hope Digg will turn the account off because it could be used to spam. I hate spam unless it comes in a can or on bread.

Oh, in other news: I have lost all respect for GeekForLife.

Pretty cool, more power to this guy.

In the end we have a guy that is $200 richer and will digg from scratch a new account to within 100 again, someone who is $200 poorer and has an account that is within the 100 and will fall lower and lower in all likeliness. Digg gets a lot of publicity over the whole thing and we get to talk (or argue) about it. Perfect slow news day stuff.

I would think this is more of a curiousity stunt than anything else - of course the profile will be shut off - what’s the point of selling the profile if the person behind it does not have anything to say anymore (because they are someone else).

Odd that one of the users bidding on ebay has a username of geekforlife2, which is a brand new user, registered on Jul-30-06.

I wonder how much popular MySpace pages would go for? Or if MySpace members have thought of auctioning some of their page for ads?

It would be kinda funny since Rupert Murdoch and company are still looking for ways to profit from MySpace.

I can’t believe the nerve of this girl! I mean, I take my hard-earned free time and blah blah foo blah bar blah.

I actually like the idea that certain profiles - certain ‘attention suppliers’ - have monetary value. I mean, shouldn’t they? Don’t they? Of course, they do. There’s no tears in profiles!

In other news, Israel executed a bunch more brownish people today.

And the SF Marathon supposedly happened, though, you had to be up early if you wanted to catch the 2.30 am start time or whatever it was.

And cococococomment sucks. And the name sucks. It has possibilities, though. If you work for the NSA and are trying to keep tabs on ‘profiles’.

Digg that.

Simon Willison Calacanis will never pay someone who bought their account - he’s after the people who are prolific posters, not the accounts themselves.

Ya don’t say

According to this post submitted by user Geekforlife:

http://digg.com/tech_news/I_co.....le_in_eBay

Someone claimed to have correctly guessed the password to that account and is apparently in control of it now.

It doesn’t matter what anybody says here….. digg is now part of “the machine”… see #3

People are Basically Lazy and Money Hungry… They will try to sell anything if it envolves the *Least Amount of Effort* and they can make the *Most Bucks From It*…

EVERYONE AVOID THIS SELLER ON EBAY! He’s been pushing up the price of his own account!

Check the bid history. Half the bids were placed by accounts that were created on July 30th. Heck, one of the bids comes from geekforlife2. This guy is a cheat. He probably does this to everything he sells on ebay.

Again, AVOID THIS SELLER AT ALL COSTS!

Well, its a simple economics equation - If you have made a site/application successful, you would definitely want to have some share of it.

And the Netscape bid actually evoked those monetary emotions amongst the top Digg users.
I don’t see anything wrong with the auction- This maybe a harbinger to community/web 2.0; i..e let people share and decide, but pay them to do that!!

Ashish
Idea Labs

i dont like it when free and unbiased stuff starts turining in to some thing like this

Well, apart from the Digg profile, here is another story of a Myspace user minting money out of her strong network..

Yes, it does bring upon a basic qn (as pointed by ‘Search Engine”) - Is this the future of social networks? i.e. commercialization of social networks?

Only time will tell !!

Ashish

Kevin - From looking at the user’s feedback it appears that this user hasn’t sold anything before. Also, don’t jump to conclusions about those users who registered just today. Here is an article from one of those users, explaining why he/she is bidding on it.

http://onstartups.com/Home/tab.....count.aspx

-Alan

I work for eBay, but this opinion is my own, blah blah blah. Oh - and I don’t have access to any super-secret eBay data — just whats available on the website to everyone else. Our customer service folks will take appropriate action if there is anything against policy going on with this auction.

Hey Michael, will you let me put this comment up on eBay?

Maybe he should try and trade the digg account for something cooler; like a flamethrower. Any first offers?

It sounds quite strange that people are able to sell user accounts, but if there is really a demand… why not?

I am not evenglist of eBay and Digg, but why not combine Digg and eBay together? It is obviously that now it is hard to find great deals on eBay, finding is a big problem with so many un-structured items (eBay it is totally different than Amazon which sales product, while eBay is really a long-tails stuff store). Digg may help great deals float above the water.

I am not evenglist of eBay and Digg, but why not combine Digg and eBay together? It is obviously that now it is hard to find great deals on eBay, finding is a big problem with so many un-structured items (eBay is totally different than Amazon which sales product, while eBay is really a long-tails stuff store). Digg may help great deals float above the water.