52 Bicycles

Josh Porter comments on Derek Powazek’s criticism of Netscape’s decision to pay for ”top posters” at Digg to add content to their own site. In his own Paying People for Voted-on Content: What’s the Right Model? Josh suggests that paying people per se is not wrong (which is Powazek’s criticism), but that a micro-payment system would foment a better environemnt so everyone got paid for contributing.

Both posts come across as very egalitarian, but I think this spirit misses the point, and an opportunity to be pounced on.

Jason Calanis, the man behind netscape.com, is a businessman, and sees a gap in the market. Rather than go with an all-editorial site, or an all-”wisdom of crowds” site, he is hiring editorial talent to get links, and letting the “crowd” participate and evaluate after that. I would suggest that he is not “paying his users” (which Powazek seems to take as a kind of insult) but rather complementing their insight with that of hired staff.

And since the editorial talent is about finding links, he is hiring people who find links well, and at the same time is taking a swipe at his competition, which I think is clever. Exposing how much of a “crowd” site is based on a few individuals is helpful - shoiwng how Pareto might have it more right than Anderson when it comes to this kind of content.

As such, the micropayment scheme that Porter discusses seems off-base. The point is not paying the userbase, but rather getting a best-of-both in editorial and user participation. The former is paid, and that is what I see Netscape doing.

Identifying a gap in the market - there’s the foundation for a business.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 26th, 2006 at 1:46 pm and is filed under Technology Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed. Reddit This