Home

Jason Calacanis - Top Digg Users Taking Payola

Jason Calacanis who caused a little bit of a stir at SES last week, is now coming out saying digg users are getting paid--just not by digg.

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.

Jason did start the Digg competitor at Netscape.com however is no longer involved in the management of that site. I have absolutely no information to say whether this is true or completely fabricated. I can say however that there have been several high profile Digg users banned in the past few weeks and several others have been posting chat logs and emails about being approached to Digg stories. So if it is true it's clearly a black eye for social media as a whole, but by know means it's death knell.

- Y! MyWeb

Why does this matter?

If someone submits a story as part of a PR campaign, but Diggers like it enough to vote it to the homepage, I don't really see a problem.

By Andy Hagans at Dec 12 2006 - 14:58

lol

And this is news.... come on the spamming of Digg has been a profit center for many of the top diggers for quite some time.
They either make the money from their own arbitrage sites or get cash directly for helping someone else.

By AussieWebmaster at Dec 12 2006 - 15:18

Agreed - this type of thing

Agreed - this type of thing shouldn't surprise anyone. These types of things always happen to new or still new-ish mediums - it's just a form of spam, IMO...and sadly, we must take the good with the bad...

By SportsGuy at Dec 12 2006 - 17:51

In the Pantheon of the

In the Pantheon of the Douches, that guy is truly the Summer's Eve Firehose of Douches.

By scoreboard at Dec 12 2006 - 19:27

Netscape's Warning

On this page there is this warning from Netscape Editor C.K.:

Quote:
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.

By skore at Dec 12 2006 - 19:33

Douchebag of the Year Award goes to...

People trying to game a system of ranking? You don't say. Where have I heard that before? Maybe Nutscrape will see enough traffic one day to have to worry about it.

I second scoreboard's sentiment.

By markus941 at Dec 12 2006 - 20:23

ugh

Jason should definitely rank for charlatan douchebag.

It really wouldn't be so bad if he didn't constantly contradict himself. I can't wait to see him start extolling the virtues of SEO.

By stuntdubl at Dec 12 2006 - 20:43

Tight Ass

Well that answers the question who's the tight ass over there. So can I go submit Steve Rubel's blog and get everyone of Edelman's clients banned from netscape, sounds like a well thought out plan to me ...

By graywolf at Dec 12 2006 - 20:44

I third

Scoreboard

Maybe Nutscrape will see enough traffic one day to have to worry about it.

Exactly.

By Andy Hagans at Dec 12 2006 - 20:54

Sequoia Capital

Due to his new position, I'm sure and this is IMHO, that everything he says now is to smear companies that Sequoia can't grab or isn't interested in.

By msgraph at Dec 13 2006 - 02:19