Gadgets & Tech – A significant PR/marketing firm has confirmed that they had a number of the top 50 users on digg now on the payroll.
C.K.:
I want to weigh in here and note that if you work with a PR firm and are considering using such tactics here on Netscape, be forewarned: if we discover any evidence of this happening on Netscape, we will ban every member and every site associated with this type of action.
That means, if Generic PR FirmTM offers this "service" and you are considering using them, think again. If they get caught here on Netscape, we'll ban them and all of their customers who we can track down.
2006-12-12 10:18:24
I would like to hear this from a digger.We have some of the top 50 diggers over here.Has anybody been approached? I also talk to a couple of top digger at Digg and they have never mentioned this, not saying that this could not be true, but what does this firm gain by coming out with this information.
I feel this one might be a bit far fetched too. Im pretty chatty with a large portion of diggs top 50, pretty much everyone that has contact info listed. And ive yet to hear about this from anyone, or been offered this myself.
Just doesnt seem possible that a PR firm could hire a "Number" of top diggers without one of a dozen or so top 50 digg users i trust 100% with letting me know about it, telling myself, or another user.
I'm a top 50 digg user and have never been approached by anyone. I don't really see a reason to do this even if someone does approach me. In the end of the day it's quite easy to track these kinds of things, and getting myself banned is not worth all the effort I put into becoming a top digg user.
On the other hand, digg should start thinking about a way to compensate its most dedicated users.
This is my take, and what I posted in the comments to Jason's blog post:
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.
(continued...)
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.
(continued)
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.
(done)
As someone who works at his day job in the new media space, I'm embarrassed by the fact that PR firms would take this tack and think they would get away with it. Let's face it - almost nothing is going to be "hidden" anymore when it comes to the Web, and the fact that people actually think they won't be "exposed" is frankly a joke.
It's part of my job to educate our clients and staff that this isn't the sort of thing that we take part in. And as much as I am a member of the Netscape community and a Navigator here on the site, I don't really go near things that are about clients of my employer, just as I don't blog about things on the various blogs I write for that are about said clients. The last thing I need, or my client needs, is to have a random headline or buzz going on about such a tactic happening, and all it does is take away from what we're supposed to be doing for them in the first place.
Supernova stated in the digg comments that He gets offers but has turned them all down. This story is clearly hyped up with no substantial merit to it.
Also, in social networking, it doesn't really matter, does it? The users vote on the content so unless it's a GOOD ad, then it will get buried, or... It would be a good ad, and maybe people should watch it then.
I don't see how just because it's "social networking" makes it right. If anything, that's worse. You wouldn't expect your friend to start waxing poetic about Vibbledon, a new drug that's great for your ailments. Then you take it, get sick, and blame him, all to find out he was paid by the makers of Vibbledon (made this word up, although it could exist!). Would you like that? There's no diff. People come to these places expecting a certain playing field. When a guy shows up with a shotgun behind his back, you gotta call 'em out fast.
Even magazines and newspapers (Parade comes to mind) have the decency to mark advertorials as just that.
What I'm saying is that it's really not all that scandalous, when you consider any stories that are clearly advertizing are going to be buried by the digg community. Just because it's a top 50 poster doesn't guarantee that it will make it to the home page. That's why I think even if they were taking money to post things, it would be futile.
Digg is much better to navigate.
I use Netscape 8.1 as my browser. I constantly get "flickering" ads on the site. That is, if there is an ad on the right side, it flickers on the rest of the screen. Very annoying.
I like the Netscape site--it's just the flickering ads are very bothersome.
--Doesn't happen on Digg.
Does anyone else have the "flickering" issue?
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Very interesting!!!! Thanks Neophile.
Damn, word is out.. Better pack my Millions in PR cash and head for Mexico in my Ferrarri that bill gates bought me to submit MS stuff..