Digg CEO Jay Adelson responds to Netscape challenge
Digg CEO Jay Adelson took time out of his busy
schedule to email me some thoughts about Netscape's
new digg-inspired community news site. Jay's thoughts below, but first some context.
I've written two posts about the new Netscape site. In the Read/WriteWeb post
I had two main points:
1) I think introducing paid editors into a community site may end up being as problematic as the 'hive mind' that it aims to prevent - because it introduces potential bias and favoritism.
2) The prominence of internal links and editors influencing discussions with "commentaries", IMO deflects attention away from the actual articles - which leads me to think Netscape wants to keep people onsite, in order to expose them to more advertising (which there is a lot of on the new Netscape site). This of course is an old-style portal strategy.
I followed that up with a ZDNet post which suggested that the paid editors now hold the balance of power - and how appropriate is that for a community site? I also pointed out that because Netscape has released a working version of non-tech categories before Digg, that this could spell trouble for Digg as it attempts to expand beyond tech.
Jay Adelson's response
In his email to me, Digg CEO Jay Adelson questioned how active Netscape's users will be. He suggested that to achieve true interactivity, you need minimum intervention - i.e. no editors! He told me:
"A significant amount of our visitors are active (meaning they participate, not lurk). I'm curious how many interactive users Time Warner will have on their site. That was one of our greatest challenges, building that base.
Digg is extremely focused on transparency and absolutely no editors/intervention. We will never have a small group of people provide oversight."
Jay also questioned how scalable Netscape's site will be, with Netscape putting so much emphasis on manual editing:
"Another question I have is about scalability. We feel that there is a technical scale issue with user submissions, in that if you have thousands, or tens of thousands, of submissions a day, how does a few editors parse them? Ultimately, we need the users to both digg and bury stories, provide the editorial, in order to keep up with the real-time world of Internet-based content."
Jay ends by effectively announcing that it's Game On!
"Finally, we are very proud of the fact that there have been thousands of clones of digg. Keep them coming! (Time Warner is the first billion dollar company to do it, but bring it on. Surprised they went for the look and feel too, though.)
Stay tuned for v3! (Should be fun.)"
My thanks to Jay Adelson for sending me his thoughts. I'm going to email Netscape CEO Jason Calacanis to see if he wants to respond, because I'm sure he'll have some good points in return.
NB: I'm publishing this post to both Read/WriteWeb and ZDNet, because I can't decide on which site it belongs more! But no they're not clones of each other :-)
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There will be many clones, but only one true Digg.
The way that its traffic rose so quickly is evidence that they way digg does it is the right way.
Jay makes a great point. The proof is in the pudding, look at the comment threads on any given article on Digg. I haven't seen user interaction on that scale, since, well, ever. Editors don't promote that kind of interaction, they become the be all and end all of a comment system. On Digg, anyone can be right (even the eccentrics), and getting buried tends to make comments as noticable as being dugg.
I agree with Jay in that no one will want day old news (the time it takes the editors to parse through thousands of stories). Digg provides user submitted news that are made availabe even if they are not popular to the community. The users then have more varity and will reach more of the nich/eccentric/geeky/etc. readers where Netscape will not have anything for these smaller groups which combined make up a large portion of the community.
Good luck Netscape, your gonna need it!
I agree that most users will look around but not participate. The fact that Digg users run the site has a major influence on its popularity.
Digg has editorial intervention too, there is proof for that on several web sites. But unlike Netscape which are openly admit that, digg will not come forward, and they'll try to shut up and ban any site that criticise them or expose their behaviour.
Here are some examples:
http://tiktech.blogspot.com/2006/05/proof-that-digg-moderatores-manipulate.html
http://www.aviransplace.com/index.php/archives/2006/05/12/proof-that-digg-moderatores-manipulate-stories/
http://forevergeek.com/news/digg_corrupted_editors_playground_not_userdriven_website.php
Old school news publishers, such as Netscape, just don't get why Digg is as successful as it's been. They likely never will.
Give the people a framework by which to expose and share their voices, and then step away. Take care of the technical details but leave the editorial process completely alone. That's how to grow a dynamic, flowing ecosystem like Digg.
I do not like the idea of remaining in Netscape frame all the time. However, I feel that for serious bloggers, this is another way of getting more coverage and hits.
Interesting, I wonder if they are really entering the market per se, or just trying to spice things up a little bit.
It will be interesting to see how they leverage their current traffic levels, and more importantly if they can market and manage the level of submissions they they will receive.
Word is that Weblogs CEO Jason (recent acquisition by AOL) is pushing his "hired bloggers" concept around at Netscape, attempting to claim the corporation ladder AOL. When editorial writers control the ship, sometimes it sails in directions it might not if the mass community was at the wheel. In any case, Jason is the new fair haired kid at AOL who has convinced the old guard he really knows the current flow of the web -- but is he really an innovator ?? Are they going to launch new technologies.....they have the resources, but Time Warner does not say "invent" for its corporate culture !! Go boys, we want to see Netscape return to the glory days ....where is Marc when you need him ??
Yeah I dont like the idea of being stuck in the Netscape frame all the time either :\
Wow, I'm seeing a lot of loyal Digg fans jumping to it's defense. Maybe this is because they understand the level of threat that their community is now facing?
Clearly it's not as bottom-up as Digg. But it's sure as hell more interesting than the previous incarnation of Netscape.
Calacanis seems to be a smart guy who's pushing AOL in the right direction. Let's face it, when was the last time anyone talked about the Netscape front-page?
It's also worth comparing digg.com with something like slashdot.org, which has a fanatical community but is editor driven. ( http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?compare_sites=digg.com&range=6m&size=medium&y=r&url=slashdot.org )
In fact, there seems to be a lot of cross-over between the Slashdot and Digg crowds, which suggest that the editorial driven approach and the mob driven are complementing each other rather than mutually exclusive rivals. If that's so, it's not hard to imagine that such a complementary mix might work *within* a particular site too. It's going to be worth experimenting with, at the very least.
I don't really see the problem with it. It's just an alternative to Digg... Personally, I'll still be on Digg all the time, but I'll definitely be on Netscape's site too...
I responded to the Netscape vs. DIGG thing on my personal blog at www.calacanis.com.
We don't compete with DIGG... DIGG is one of our news sources that we do Metajournalism on top of.