Ragnar Dannesjkold was a modern-day pirate who robbed from the undeserving poor to give back to the deserving rich, basically. And in this context that means…?

Go ahead, continue using Digg. I’m not stopping you nor am I condeming you. I’m just asking you to step out of your shell for 10 seconds and realize that Digg has a powerful idea that could be improved. Being open to constructive criticism never hurts.

People who use Digg, without helping it to pay the bills, will kill it! It ain’t cheap running something like that… That .02 cents you earn them by clicking on the ads help it stay ALIVE man!

Don’t kill what you love.

And you call me arrogant? I’m not an idiot, and I do not believe that Digg is “not democratic”. Everyone chooses what they vote for. You’re typical of the Digg whiners.

And if you want to talk about Digg being overrated, well, who gives you that idea? Who says its overrated? What makes you more right than all those who use it? That is what democracy is - people make the choice to use Digg, and it is the people who have made it popular.

So No, it’s not overrated. If it was, it would not be popular. You are underrating it, if I am to take your flawed logic.

You know Jay, you don’t know it, but you’re exactly what you think I am. A part of a group of people with the same shared opinion. Except that you think you’re an outsider who sees the light. LMAO. It’s lame.

Critics never create a goddamn thing.

It is sad, but economics force people to do things that are sustainable. If Digg can’t figure out a sustainable model, too bad. Even Karl Marx said the beauty of capitalism was that it forces continual change.

@ 26 N. Cauldwell

Exactly my point. The BBC and The Economist write about news that really matters to a wider audience of people. Most Web 2.0 sites are cool and nice but don’t solve problems that impact a majority of people. Digg doesn’t help you be healthier, it doesn’t help you be smarter, it doesn’t help you save time in life, it doesn’t help you get wealthier (unless you are paid to game it), and it doesn’t make you happier. Neither do most Web 2.0 sites except perhaps social networks.

@ 27 Paul

I’m not rooting for any of these gaming sites at all. In fact PayPerPost is quite an awful company and it bothers me that a vanguard VC firm like DFJ would fund them. Have you ever watched their show - RockStartUp.com? It’s obnoxious.

BTW Paul, you’re pretty typical of Digg users: arrogant, male, and completely unaware of the fact Digg is not democratic at all.

@ 29 and 31 (HigherEdChat and Lewis Salem)

Thanks - you two get it. Digg is overrated. Yes, it keeps growing but that’s because a few fanatics are driving up usage. It has niche appeal and is too heavily skewed by fanatics.

I sincerely find the idea behind Digg to be very cool. That being said, it’s failure is the fact that a few people dominate it. So much for a truly democratic system

- is simply - going to face legal problems down the road … Its not that hard.

- digg is going to get bought out; then - sue the hell out of stupid sites like this …

-RB

How many of those annonymous accounts that help Digg grow are from spammers and gamers? There’s no reason someone can’t make 500 accounts in the span of one hour — especially when you’ll get $ for every Digg.

Digg and it’s clones serve a purpose, to be sure. The “democratization” of the web is also, at heart, a great ideal to aspire to.

Just keep a realistic outlook. Nothing is pure, and fundamentalists (religious, or otherwise) are dangerous to the survival of the very things they believe in — because it’s too easy not to see flaws when you’re in the grips of blind faith.

Hooray for democracy!

Because it’s just a bunch of overblown whining. Is it all of a sudden “cool” or “intelligent” to not like Digg? I LOVE Digg. I have a Digg t-shirt. Call me a fanboy, and I don’t give a fuck - because I’m not some lame-o with no personality, who is afraid to like anything too much for fear of being called a fan.

Just stop the bitching. Please. It’s pathetic. Digg is popular, it rocks, you won’t reach it’s heights, and you can just eat that. You probably won’t get on the front page, either - deal with it.

Subvert and Profit has some pretty lame intentions, and is just terrible at justifying its shady ‘business’. As someone said, fast-tracked to the Deadpool.

But I am here to comment on these gaming sites. It’s really sad how they are justifying their actions. This is what I found in the Subvert and Profit blog:

“Oh yeah, ethics. We’re sure some of you might be disappointed, angry, or otherwise upset with our shameless, parasitic, practices. From our perspective, we are doing what the entrepreneur does, finding an unfilled niche in the economy and capitalizing on it… this is where any ethical analysis should begin and end. And while we are parasites, we do not wish to kill our hosts. Furthermore, the democracy of web 2.0 is already hacked, rigged, and flawed enough for our impact to go unnoticed.”

My response:
1) An entrepreneur creates a product/service that ADDS VALUE to society and benefits it as a whole . You are not finding a niche in the economy. You are finding a hole in the system and EXPLOITING it.
2) Yes, you are a parasite. And of course it would not be in your interest to kill the host. Because then you would need to find a new one. So don’t make it seem like you are a small mosquito just harmlessly taking a little blood from Digg’s body.
3) Just because something is “hacked/flawed”, does not give you the right to continually take advantage of it. I think I’ll shoplift from the corner store today because I just noticed their security cameras are broken. And yes, gaming is stealing. You are stealing the integrity of the Digg model.
4) My key point is that you are not creating any value with your gaming service. The web economy as a whole is not benefiting. A small fraction of people may be making money from this scheme, but it’s at the cost of the rest of the web community.
5) Essentially, this reminds me of organized crime. There is an underground “economy” out there based on illegal activity. These organizations do not add value to society. They take money out of the real economy and pump it into their illegal system. And somehow they justify it.

I’m extremely saddened that there are still people out there producing these gaming sites. But I am not the least worried. I do believe in a web democracy that will eventually weed out these bad apples. Maybe Digg won’t survive. Maybe their model really does not work. But for sure, a gaming site will never survive. And I’m sure gaming sites understand this as well. They just want to make a quick buck while they still can. This is disheartening.

Digg is a huge site by all means and it’s valuable because it’s demographic is very specific and very hard to reach - 20 to 30 year old, technologically savvy men. These are people like myself who don’t watch TV or don’t notice ads on TV. We don’t click on a single Google AdSense ad. We don’t respond to email marketing. We may notice the ads above the urinal at a bar we go to, but that’s about it.

I personally don’t like or use Digg regularly. There are far more intelligent news sites like the BBC and The Economist.

Digg in many ways is worse than regular, editorialized news. With regular news, you hire a PR firm. With Digg, you just pay one of the Top 50 power Digg users. The regular media at least has some semblance of ethics.

Digg, Netscape, Reddit, and the thousands of copy-cat sites are really quite useless to the average American. They are dominated by people with far too much time on their hands and therefore, are irrelevant to the average person. They are even becoming irrelevant to people like ourselves.

Gaming attempts like this are only logical. I don’t support them but the very definition of Web 2.0 bubble is to say “things are different this time.” How many times have you heard that? The economics have to be there and Digg has yet to figure out a viable model to monetize it’s userbase.

Here’s a suggestion for Digg and Kevin Rose. If you really think you are worth hundreds of millions of dollars, how about sharing that with your userbase? I’m not suggesting a multi-level marketing scam or pyramid scheme like AGLOCO.com, but it would make sense to create some sort of system to reward users for high quality articles. I don’t have an answer - figure it out. That’s what you’re supposed to do.

The whole point of social media like Digg is that it’s far too easy to copy and there’s no reason for one to be loyal to a site like Digg. I’d rather be in the business of creating a Do-It-Yourself Digg so other people can copy Digg using my software and just license it to them. At least I’d make money that way.

Just my ten cents Michael, my two cents are always free.

Every ranking, voting system on the web is able to be manipulated to some degree. There is never going to be a perfect system . Every time a change is made someone will figure out a way to get a round it and benefit from it. The more systems are gamed the better they get. It is going to happen, and I believe it is our duty to expose the limitations of these systems so that they will ultimately build them stronger.

It’s an attention steering game, no matter who’s at the controls. The school of fish is still being baited to a waiting net.

What’s at stake for Digg is the authenticity of the play and validity of subsequent marketing data gathered on the school’s patterns.

Operations like SubPro are fishing without a license and I suppose in the scheme of things that’s not fair.