Update: If you know of someone doing this let me know and get a C-Note.
Update2: The first tip is in, and *if* it is correct someone paid off the number five digg user this week.
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I know these reports have been going around, but I have the inside line and figured it was time to share it.
A PR/marketing firm confirmed with me that they had a number of the top 50 users on digg now on the payroll--and this wasn't a totally insignificant firm.
The problems that digg is facing now is that a portion--certainly not all--of the top users feel like they should be getting paid for the 3-4 hours they spend on the site each day. Since digg will not pay them for their work they are finding other ways to get compensated.
Note: The Navigators at Netscape are not being paid by the PR firm, and if they ever do something on the side they will have broken their contract and would be fired immediately. Of course, the other users on Netscape could be getting paid just like the ones on digg are--however at Netscape you have the paid staff to turn this stuff off. The PR/marketing person I talked to said they can get a significant portion of their stories up on on digg. Ouch.
Will this problem kill digg? Nope, because the audience can bury things.
Will this problem undermine trust in digg? Of course.
My prediction is social news sites without a paid staff of editors cleaning the site up will be less trusted than ones with editorial staffs.
Note2: I no longer work at Netscape obviously. However, I still care deeply about the space.
digg users are getting paid--just not by digg
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(Page 1 of 2)2. Peter: You can easily get a story on the home page on Netscape because there are a ton of user, but many of them don't vote yet (they are still learning the concept of social news frankly).
I think film stuff can get on the site with as little as 8-12 votes.
The reason it *seems* like the anchors have a lot of stories up there is because they are out there hunting for news all the time and the membership of Netscape is not as active yet--again, folks are learning how to participate in social news (as opposed to digg where everyone who came knew what was going on).
4. First off let me say (and I've said this before) I think netscape has a lot of cool features that digg doesn't. I like netscape. But I can tell you this. I post stuff on netscape and every other social link submitting site on the internet. I usually post a few things a week from my websites. And the posts are not just rewritten copy from other sites, its either exclusive news or an indepth anaylsis of a news story. That said, I have gotten 3 posts on diggs front page in the last 2 months, and I've been as or more sucessful on all the other social news sites (shoutwire, newsvine...etc) ButSOMEHOW none of my submissions on netscape have made the front page since early August. I find it hard to believe that it's a new user issue. It seems like when Netscape was first starting up whenever an anchor would give one of my stories a picture or a vote, it would go frontpage. None of my stories have made front page since, and none of them were "endorsed" by the anchors. coincidence? I think not. The fact that the same news and features make the top and front page of other social sites which give the full power to its users i think proves that there is something wrong with the anchor system.
Posted at 1:11AM on Dec 12th 2006 by Peter Sciretta
7. Hey, I called it in July!
http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/07/19/huge-red-flag-at-netscape/#comment-104455
8. 2 things: 1. I doubt the PR firms are necessarily going for the frontpage on Digg. We see a lot of spam submitted to Netscape, and most of the more savvy spammers decide to just put the information in there with hot tags, rather than trying to promote the stories to the homepage. The result? Sometimes their spam can sit there unnoticed and unreported for some amount of time, gaining Google juice and showing up in searches and on tag pages. I would guess the PR firms paying Digg users strategy is similar. They probably want the link love from Digg, but they don't necessarily want to be exposed.
2. Everyone gets too fixated on the front page. The homepage is the most vibrant and alive part of social news sites, for sure, but with Netscape we're trying to be more than just another social news site. We want to be a social news portal and we want to help encourage a vibrant heterogeneous community of micro-communities who come to the different Channels and even specific tag pages and live there. This front-page obsession that you see in comments like Peter Sciretta's above, is similar to how when blogging first started hitting everyone was eager to get linked to by the big wigs of blogging, b/c that would boost your site. However, most successful bloggers just made good content, Google and the other search engines eventually found their content, and then other bloggers would link to them and all of a sudden they were a success. I think that's the same mind barrier people need to overcome with social news. It doesn't all have to be about the homepage. It's about getting involved in a community and submitting cool stories and building good content. If you're the crazy person who submits every story possible about crocheting to Netscape and none of those stories get more than 1 or 2 votes, one of these days, if you're tagging things correctly, all those stories are going to start showing up in search results and the crocheting community is going to find you and BOOM. It's a long tail strategy, and I think the homepages of these sites distract us from that aspect from time to time.
9. You know of just *one* company doing this? :)
Posted at 9:45AM on Dec 12th 2006 by Brian Turner
10. The recurring theme I keep seeing in all of this is Google. Just as AOL was blamed for all of the spam in the early days of the public internet I think Google is the one pushing scenarios like this today. It seems to me that the goal of the "gaming" and paid placement isn't to get the eyeballs of the sites they post to, but to affect their backend score with Google.
I believe that as long as Google exists, any sort of social site that is index able is doomed to spam and forever chasing that secret algorithm to stop it.
The question is that if Google were to disappear today and was either not replaced or was replaced by 4-5 equal players, would social sites survive on their own? If being a top portal was the only key to success, Yahoo would've dominated the internet long ago.
Posted at 10:32AM on Dec 12th 2006 by -gary
11. I have my suspicions as to which firm it is.
Posted at 11:03AM on Dec 12th 2006 by Russell Page
12. I don't mean to rake the muck around here, but if you want to make such an allegation (a pretty grave one, too), you need to actually spill the beans. "A PR/marketing firm" doesn't mean very much - you need to name them or get another report with more details to corraborate. Indicting someone and then hiding behind an anonymous source with literally no validation is a cheap trick. It's not acceptable in a newspaper and it's not acceptable online. I'll refrain from passing judgement (in any direction), until more information pours in, but you should be at the head of the collection comittee.
Posted at 12:32PM on Dec 12th 2006 by Jerivix
13. At least one political advocacy group, ThinkProgress.org, has their paid staff submitting and digging stories on Digg (Moreover, Digg knows this and does nothing about it). See:
http://rikki-tikki-tavis-garden.blogspot.com/
AND
http://www.calacanis.com/2006/10/05/thinkprogress-org-shows-up-at-netscape-and-digg-and-folks-are-n/
Is it really so surprising PR firms would pay others to do the same on their behalf?
If a social news site's management doesn't actively protect the integrity of their amateur content, they will get used and abused by organizations with money and agendas until those sites' communities have been erroded into insignificance.
Posted at 1:33PM on Dec 12th 2006 by RikkiTikkiTavi
14. "Since digg will not pay them for their work they are finding other ways to get compensated."
For the love of God, man.
'Paid' contribution is not what Digg is about. It's about community. User contribution that is 'sincere' is part of what makes Digg an excellent online community. Paid contributors do not equate into better content. Period.
Wouldn't you agree that part of Digg's success is due to this unique model?
Maybe paid users make sense for Netscape. After all, I've read that you don't seem to think very highly of their users. But Digg is a different beast.
If I follow Calacanis logic,what's next? Paid MySpace users? Paid delicious contributors? (Heck, I'd sign on board for that one. I bookmark like crazy. I outa get a cent ever time a save a bookmark)
Honestly, I guess I just don't understand why you feel so strongly about unpaid contributors. In my opinion when put more value on the contributor than you do the content, you open wide the door to web 2.0 mediocrity.
P.S. As far as whether or not I believe your claims are true. I do. The reason being, that I have noticed a decline in interesting content on Digg lately. Whew! Now I know why.
15. Excellent detective work Jason, though more data is needed to dis DIGG on this issue since PR firms say a lot of stuff that is untrue or exaggerated. It's common knowledge in SEO, however, that DIGG is big and there appear to be many unpaid "networks" of people who digg each other's stories as favors. Not clear if that even violates Digg policy but it certainly is not in the spirit of social news.
This is only part of a bigger story about how social networks and new SEO approaches are creating an underground network of paid participants. As with pro vs amateur sports scandals of the 60s-today there is a LOT more to this story and the many related stories.
16. "'Paid' contribution is not what Digg is about. It's about community. User contribution that is 'sincere' is part of what makes Digg an excellent online community. Paid contributors do not equate into better content. Period.
I really don't think it will have an effect on the stories seen on digg. Even if someone is paid to submit a story on digg, the community still needs to give it enough votes to get to the front page. If it is a bad story, it will just get buried..otherwise it will make it.
Posted at 7:31PM on Dec 12th 2006 by Justin Silverton
17. I think the diggs sucks over all. Why should what others think is top news over ride what actually is? Who cares that Diana's phones were tapped or Britney is being investagated! Netscape totally turned to nothing but a garbage site and after 8 years, I have come to hate them.
Posted at 8:32PM on Dec 12th 2006 by Bill
18. CK, you totally missed what my comment was about which was how the paid navagator system does not allow for stories which aren't promoted by nav's to make the front page (or even front page of a section most times). I only submit stories a couple times a week, and only when they have exclusive informational value. The fact that the same stories time after time get front paged on all the other social networking sites except netscape proves that something is different. People are voting my stories on netscape, it's the navagators who are not promoting them. And thats the difference. It's a flawed system. Because if it's happening with me it must be happening with many others. Besides that I love netscape. But you guys have to learn why people love social news sites.... first word: social. The people need to have some actual control. And with the current system it is rare that a post will get some views unless a nav attaches an image to it.
Posted at 12:27AM on Dec 13th 2006 by Peter Sciretta
20. Peter: if you want to get your stories promoted I suggest making friends with 20-30 users on the Netscape service... dropping in once and a while to throw in your best three stories is great, but doesn't seem to work as well as being part of the community every day (or two days).
Get the Netscape sidebar and vote and comment on other stories and you'll make friends and when you put in a story you'll get the 3-5 votes you need to get "on deck," and if you're on deck and the story is good you'll get to the front page I bet.
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1. PR firms with the top Digg Users in their back pockets??? LOL I'm an active digg user (in the top 200) and I can tell you unless its something very subtle or viral, 99.5% of the front page stories do not appear to be an advertised or paid story. If there are any posts on digg that appear to be promoting anything it may be some of the nintendo wii stories, but I think that can be easily accounted to the huge community of nintendo fanboys on the internet. And besides, some of those stories have been from joystiq or engadget. The problem with paid anchors is that it makes it almost impossible to get a netscape story on the front page unless it gets voted or upgraded by an anchor. The users rarely have the power to promote a story without an anchor on netscape.
Posted at 11:53PM on Dec 11th 2006 by Peter Sciretta