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Calacanis Buys Top Digg Users

Ionut Alex. Chitu [PersonRank 10]

Wednesday, July 19, 2006
17 years ago4,730 views

Everybody's gotta eat sometimes
http://www.calacanis.com/2006/07/18/everyones-gotta-eat-or-1-000-a-month-for-doing-what-youre/

"Talent wins, and talent needs to get paid. I love paying talented people so they can sleep well at night doing what they love. That's my biggest joy in business: gettin' people paid.

We will pay you $1,000 a month for your "social bookmarking" rights. Put in at least 150 stories a month and we'll give you $12,000 a year. I'm absolutely convinced that the top 20 people on DIGG, Delicious, Flickr, MySpace, and Reddit are worth $1,000 a month."

Ionut Alex. Chitu [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Calacanis is the CEO of Netscape, a site that competes with Digg (and Reddit).

iZeitgeist [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

How much are the top 20 people on Blogoscoped worth? Anyone is giving a price ??

LOL

Sunil Nair [PersonRank 9]

17 years ago #

iZeitgeist, make that top 55. ;-)

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

So Calacanis wants to buy the tech community that Digg has and Netscape.com doesn't have? And are story-submitters worth that much more than story-diggers (and what will story-diggers think of that notion)?

Sam Davyson [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

iZeitgeist: We really can't be bought.

I think this might be a successful ploy by Jason. Everyone likes money.

/pd [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

being top dawg .. I think think I'' ever work for Jason..

=="How much are the top 20 people on Blogoscoped worth? Anyone is giving a price ??"

Seriously ?? from a think tank perspective-- I think a lot of worth floats around amongst the top 20/30 members. From a KM perspective – if I were to ask a peg a professional prices to retain the services of those 20/30 – I would have to budget at least about $1.5M .. that breaks out to about 30-40K /yr per person.

alek [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

WOW – this is *really* going to shake up the social bookmarking space I predict. Make total financial sense in the battle for eyeballs. I would be surprised if we don't see a similar move in the user-generated video space as people try to compete with the YouTube's – i.e. something along the lines of if you post a video and it gets XXX views, we'll give you a cut.

And to think in my lifetime, I remember when *anything* commercial on the Internet was majorly frowned upon.

Philipp: Your stuff is very high quality – and given the 5 posts/day requirement which is about what you do, maybe programmically have a direct feed from your blog into Netscape! ;-)

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

What if Jason simply thinks of the $12,000 as advertising budget for the new Netscape.com? I mean, the controversy's getting a lot of coverage right now... and today I checked out Netscape.com again after a longer break, so it worked on me!

/pd [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

"generated video space as people try to compete with the YouTube's

Corsin just pointed me to the TOS of YRTube. "when it comes to the rights you surrender to YouTube when you upload your video." – I dont think that users like that notion or are aware of the TOS!!

http://blog.wired.com/music/#1523392

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

The YouTube ToS says users who upload videos must own the copyright to the video, and that they will retain this copyright, but do grant YouTube the license to redistribute the content.
http://www.youtube.com/t/terms

"... For clarity, you retain all of your ownership rights in your User Submissions. However, by submitting the User Submissions to YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce ..."

/pd [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

yeah, that means once I make a video on yourtube (e.g the Logitech cam) , then they can sell they video to any one. They make the money, not the person who mande the video!!

/pd [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

yeah, but off course that why logitech has now become the offical cam for YR tube :)-

pk_synths [PersonRank 2]

17 years ago #

150 stories x 12 months = 1,800 stories/year.
$12,000 / 1,800 stories = $6.66/story
Netscape = Devil.

Pricelesss.

alek [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Roger on the analysis above ... but rest assured the user-submitted/generated content sites are making money with free submissions. Think about it from the submitter/publisher who is really into this stuff (not me) and tosses a ton of stories out there:

Continue to submit stories to DIGG/etc. – $0/year
Do same thing for Netscape – $12,000/year

Tadeusz Szewczyk [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

As a new proud member of the SEO Refugee forum I have to add to this duscussion what had happaned before SEO Refugee was formed: The precursor SEO Chat started paying members for contributions. That was the beginning of the end of the community. A community based on values other than money is a totally different place than one that is really social, money less. Digg is still a company not an open source platform. But when people start to compete for the money the atmoshpere in the community will deteriorate.

Tadeusz Szewczyk [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

I refer to this article: http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2006-02-03.html#n83

/pd [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

"when people start to compete for the money the atmoshpere in the community will deteriorate"

yes, that is a syndrome that I have noticed too. Thats one of the main reasons I opt in for forums and areas which DO NOT have any affliations and tieups with corporations.. its just becomes bad vibes!!

jilm [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

That effort won´t be succesful, I bet. Although it´s pretty good idea, this simply doesn´t work. You know, I think that the idea of sharing profits with its top users (who are generating that profits, in fact) is not evil or controversial. But internet society is pretty quasi-socialist and doesn´t accept this way yet.

Seth Finkelstein [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Actually, that's very cheap when compared to standard freelance rates.

"Be a freelance editor, we'll pay you ... nearly nothing".

It's hiring writers at marginal wages.

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

> What if Jason simply thinks of the $12,000 as
> advertising budget for the new Netscape.com?

(I gotta correct myself. Jason wants to hire a couple of "editors", so it'll be more like $120,000 – 240,000.)

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