Subvert and Profit is the newest service to try to sell home page placement on Digg. Like User/Submitter and Spike the Vote before it (both now offline), the idea is to charge people for a digg vote (in this case, $1 per vote).
Digg users can sign up and will receive $.50 every time they digg a story (note: this is in clear violation of the Digg terms and conditions and many users who have joined similar gaming sites have been banned from the Digg).
The difference with Subvert and Profit is their positioning. People who want to get stories on the Digg home page are called “advertisers.” The site describes itself as “We allow advertisers to purchase actions on social networks” and says that they are “50 to 100 times more cost effective than conventional Internet advertising.”
The service also has an affiliate program of sorts. For every user you refer to the site, they will pay you 10% of that user’s earnings going forward.
No one has been able to set up a successful service to game digg so far. Users who signed up for User/Submitter were banned. SpiketheVote, which described itself as “bulletproof” was sold on ebay for $1,275 and the buyer then donated the domain name to Digg.
We’ll see how this one does.
This just proves digg is broken.
Does Digg trace usage based on IP addresses? If not, anyone with time on their hands can simply create multiple usernames and use each until their banned and then simply move to new ones.
Post title has a spelling error.
Next Service To Try Gaming Digg: Subert and Profit …
should read “Subvert and Profit”
I digged the story, but it doesn’t show on the “upcoming stories”. Does that mean it was buried already?
If that’s the case, I wonder why.
Even with IP tracking, it’s pretty well useless.
IPs can be spoofed; you can simply go to a local cafe and get a different one each time you log in; if you have cable broadband, as opposed to DSL, you usually get a new IP every few hrs. anyway… Etc., etc.
All social bookmarking sites are basically like MySpace friends anyway (or real friends, as Hollywood knows all too well). You can always buy your way to popularity.
And once they’re established (like Digg) they only perpetuate the status quo of the most popular bloggers’ hierarchy they were originally created to disrupt–the popularity contest/in-crowd-worshipping habits we learned in high school carry over into cyberspace much too easily to be driven off for long.
mike
stop kissing up to digg…
Yeah, it’s inevitable this kind of stuff will go on, and work to some extent. The real problem is that voting stories has very little to do with whether it’s any good or not. The wisdom of crowds isn’t just that mobs are smart, it’s that people with something at stake, as a group, generally make decent decisions. There is nothing much at stake for a voter on Digg on way or the other, and I think the quality of stories reflects its mobbiness.
Mike you might want to visit http://www.usersubmitter.com. It is still up and is reporting that they are over booked.
Bilal,
User/Submitter is only “overbooked” because they have essentially ceased operation. They do everything manually and do not have any algorithms to prevent Digg from tracking their users.
We do. We select users to Digg a story based on how unrelated they are to each other in terms of their Digging history. We also try to mimic “the average Digg user.” Thus, you will be much less likely to have your Digg account banned if you use our site, as compared to our predecessors.
- Ragnar, co-founder
I find it quite sad that companies such as these try to abuse the wonderful new age of Web 2.0 where democratization of content rules and users are able to share and recommend services and products which they actually like and enjoy. It is one thing to promote a product you actually like and think can be useful to your community, it is another to digg a story for a product you don’t even know. If companies such as Subvert and Profit succeed in their mission, all such social networks will turn into “spam networks” which will eventually cause real users to lose interest and stop participating.
You’re forgetting two things:
- The majority of people are stupid. Thus, “democracy” propagates dumb content.
- Democratic web 2.0 sites are already rigged to a large extent, and most people don’t care
We’re not going to ruin anything.
Ragnar,
Why is the evidence of this?
>>Democratic web 2.0 sites are already rigged to a large extent
Based on the dismal comments of SAP it may mesh well with digg commenters. This could become the web 2.0 battle of negativity.
Its true that few digg users are journalists, but this doesn’t mean they can’t follow the news.
Well, for example:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/top.....ge-content
Don’t think this phenomenon suddenly went away when Digg took down their top users page. I see at least one story on the front page every day from supernova17. Heh, he’s even on the front page right now.
- Ragnar
Candidate for fastrack to the Deadpool… I mean FuckedCrunch
I’m in the same boat as Blonde 2.0 . I worry about how this is going to change the landscape of web 2.0 democratic run websites. The first poster said “digg is broken”, but really the idea isn’t broken. The idea itself worked and still does! It’s these outside forces which are ruining it trying to turn a dollar.
This is EXACTLY why I am giving up on Digg. I urge you all to do the same;
http://blog.sherifmansour.com/?p=71
Or Digg my last article I’m submitting to Digg to prove a point!: http://digg.com/tech_news/Why_.....should_too
I don’t understand why a company wold want to game Digg, given the cost of the traffic arriving from Digg’s front page and the following inevitable backlash they will suffer when Digg’s userbase finds out they’ve been gamed.
Mo Kakwan,
I am not the first to say what you too quoted. Digg is a great concept. That is why it has thousands of sites copying it. But truth is, there are already organized groups “gaming” digg, getting stories of doubtful value on the front page.
It is not digg’s fault, of course. It is just hard to deal with that, and they will have a long fight against these “spammers” like google did in its early days.
Lets just hope digg comes out of it victorious. My main worry is that the concept is actually very easy to imitate, so digg is going to face greater competition than google did.
If anyone thinks that people don’t pay for diggs already, they are sadly mistaken. Others just don’t make it so obvious. This goal of making Digg spam free is just unrealistic.
Isn’t this the pot calling the kettle black? Seems to me that TC appears on the front pages of digg quite frequently and it seems also that it does THIS with a largely similar group of names every time…
(Or don’t the rules you preach equal the rules you practice?)
By the way, if you hate payperpost so much why are you selling them space on CrunchgeAR?
RS
Digg is game.
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.
It’s a lost cause. Digg is nothing more than a popularity contest, or a scratch my back I’ll scratch yours deal. There are certainly some stories that make it with out being spammed to the top, but I know it doesn’t happen that often.
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.
Michael - I’m a bit surprised at the lofty attitude you take here. Digg may have started out with noble intentions, but let’s face it, the world is about the all mighty dollar.
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.
I’m not here to comment on how good Digg is or whether it can survive. I don’t know enough about economics or web sociology to have a say.
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.
Jay - comparing Digg to the Economist is daft, the subject areas couldn’t be further apart. When was the last time the Economist got you a YouTube video about a Wii controller being used to control enterprise mashups, or made you aware of Facebook open sourcing their Thrift engine within a few hours of it happening? Maybe you should spend more time with the web services you don’t like, if only to get an understanding of what they actually do.
Oh no, Digg is really going to downhill! Wait, it’s only getting more and more popular. But all the drama, all the problems, all the “gaming”…the popularity contests, how could it possibly be growing with all of these problems?
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.
“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.”
Hooray for democracy!
P.S. Don’t mistake popularity for legitimacy.
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.
A site founded on being a ”game” site, going against the 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
Digg is so two years ago. The site has been taken over by a single demographic that votes a single way, that has a single opinion. The website is full of editorial content from websites I’ve never heard of. There is no diversity of thought.
@ 25 Saddened
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
@and completely unaware of the fact Digg is not democratic at all.
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.
PS: “living in First Life” … wow, you’re so enlightened. So much better than so many other people. Those silly web 2.0 users! They don’t have a clue! Right? Tut.
Paul–you do realize that by not clicking on any ads on Digg, you’re just a freeloader, right?
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.
Paul you just proved my point. I’m not whining about Digg. Good for Digg that they have so many users. I just think their model is flawed. If Digg was so democratic, it wouldn’t be dominated by a couple of power users. Even the real world media is not as skewed as Digg is.
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.
I love how the head honcho from SubvertandProfit has taken his (?) nickname from Ayn Rand’s ponderous Atlas Shrugged.
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…?
Any way to make money is blessed.
Its true that few digg users are journalists, but this doesn’t mean they can’t follow the news.
Digg is nothing more than a popularity contest, or a scratch my back I’ll scratch yours deal. There are certainly some stories that make it with out being spammed to the top, but I know it doesn’t happen that often.