The Buzz of Community
In Saturday’s Wall Street Journal online edition, writers Jamin Warren and John Jurgensen go into detail on the popularity and inner-workings of social bookmarking or news sites.
Without question, sites like Kevin Rose’s Digg, Netscape, Reddit, Del.icio.us and others are having an impact with their ability to drive traffic and create superstars out of its more ardent users such as Adam Fuhrer, a 12 year-old Canadian who posts on Reddit - much to Mike Arrington’s chagrin.
One of the things the trend says is that people want to decide what is news and that it is important they have a “say.” It also suggests that people tend to trust each other more and more rather than traditional news outlets.
For example, with Digg, users get to see the most voted upon stories on the home page and these ‘home page stories’ drive a ton of traffic because users trust each other’s votes.
In the end, Digg and other sites offer tools of communication, creation and sharing which in turn empower end users, a key component of so-called ‘Web 2.0‘ companies.
Jason Calacanis, the Web 2.0 empresario and former fearless leader of Weblogs, Inc., Netscape and the Silicon Alley Newsletter, burnishes the point that some users “become more than just users” and that it’s possible to have people get paid - as he suggests for the Netscape service that he began while at AOL. It was only a few months ago that Jason earned the wrath of Diggnation and its supporters when suggesting payment for the ‘Navigators’ of Netscape’s new social service.
If transparency in businesses of the future is important, Calacanis point seems valid, if not downright obvious… share the wealth with the people that make your site worth visiting.
-- John Ebbert
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