Comments on: Calacanis plays limp personal attack card against Kevin Rose

By: AOL loses Calacanis: You’ve Got Bail » Make You Go Hmm

AOL loses Calacanis: You’ve Got Bail » Make You Go Hmm — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 16:51:30 +0000

[…] All kidding aside, good luck in your next venture, Jason. We may not always see eye to eye but I think Calacanis is very talented at stirring up the dust and surrounding himself with good, hard working people. […]

By: LUX.ET.UMBRA

LUX.ET.UMBRA — Sat, 05 Aug 2006 15:22:37 +0000

Why the Digg community isn’t worth $200 million

Read the latest brouhaha about how Digg is worth $200 million and Kevin Rose is $60 million richer in Businessweek. Amusingly enough, it’s all BS mathematics and Digg hype. Chris Pirillo of Lockergnome fame says that KR and his band…

By: Deep Jive Interests » Rose vs. Calacanis: Will Poaching Posters be Profitable?

Thu, 27 Jul 2006 05:37:24 +0000

[…] 1) Jason Calacanis, now a hired gun for Netscape — which has “Digg-ified” itself — offers to pay posters to submit articles to Netscape 2) Kevin Rose of Digg (now in its 3rd iteration) doesn’t think this is a great idea, and says so in his podcast (and summarized here). 3) Jason Calacanis rebuts via his Blog. […]

By: Paul Benjamin

Paul Benjamin — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 22:09:21 +0000

You are probably right about Winer, but the only place I can see his work is on his blog so if it goes away so does he, at least in my world.

On the Calacanis vs. Rose thing I am torn as a regular Digg reader. If I was a top Digger, I am sure not, should I take table scraps from Calacanis or help Rose make his big payout and do it for the good of the other readers? In my world $1000 a month is a good part time job but I am sure that Calacanis and Rose will loose that in the round off error on their bank statements after this fight is long forgotten.

Does money change anything for Digg? Well Rose took the VC cash so I guess he thinks so. Too bad that the people who are pushing the stories into the queue and on to the front page will not get a share of the payout.

By: TDavid

TDavid — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 21:32:19 +0000

Winer isn’t going to stop writing. He might take a mini-vacation but he’s not going to walk away completely from writing somewhere. If he does, then he never really was a writer to begin with, but more like a glorified (and very good, BTW) pointer and commentator. Writing gets in your blood and you do it for reasons other than system, money or circumstance. Quitting his blog doesn’t mean his voice is going away. I think he just wants to find a new outlet and get a fresh start with something else. He’s burned out on scripting news which rarely is about scripting oddly enough.

By: Paul Benjamin

Paul Benjamin — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 20:32:10 +0000

I don’t think Calacanis or Rose care about their personal blogs. I think that they do care about their meal tickets. Calacanis has to show Warner that he is not another Turner or AOL, a smart internet guy that can’t deliver. Rose is out to make his first big score and get setup for life.

You should go look at the Gilmor Gang podcast, Calacanis made it clear that all he wants is the traffic and picking a fight is the cheapest way for him to get it. There is one good point that has come out of this though and Dave Winer made it at http://www.scripting.com/2006/07/26.html#When:6:04:23AM

Calacanis is a parasite on Digg but it will also help Rose. Calacanis rode it to the bank last time and Rose will do the same this time. Like Dave Winer said, what about the Digg users? Where is their share of the payout? Winer will be missed when he shuts down his blog. A smart guy who is not afraid of calling BS.

By: TDavid

TDavid — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 20:14:28 +0000

Calacanis motives are very transparent indeed, Paul. Funny though, I still haven’t gone to Netscape today (and won’t be unless somebody else I’m reading points to something there). Haven’t been there in a few days actually. I don’t even know if you can subscribe to a Netscape river of news RSS feed but I continue to follow the one from digg which takes me back to that site daily. It seems to me like Netscape needs to do exactly what Rose is saying to do: work on the site.

I don’t think Rose cares that much about page views for his blog (or were you referring to page hits to digg?). His last blog update was in early June.

By: Paul Benjamin

Paul Benjamin — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 19:19:07 +0000

Calacanis admitted on Gilmor Gang a recently that this Netscape flap is similar to what he did for Weblogs Inc. That is he is picking a fight just to get Netscape in the news. It worked I had not been to Netscape in years and I went to look.

Both Calacanis and Rose are going to wind up with more page views and I wind up feeling used.

By: Shane

Shane — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 14:51:24 +0000

Although I did not originally start using the new netscape to get paid, I find it appealing to say the least. I am one of the top contributers of the new netscape, and they have not offerd anything to me. Which is fine, I guess. I like some people initially had the thought, “What I am not putting up the right stories or what”, when they started offering money to other people. But then I thought, who cares, I started this while not making money and I will continue even if they never offer me the money. The money would be nice, and lord knows I could use it, its just not a motivating factor for me.

The voting thing is not new. People have been doing it on videos, pictures, and jokes for years. So digg did not create anything. They took the voting idea and added to news, big freaking deal. I am willing to bet that it was done ten years ago during the internet boom, but was forgotten. Personally I used to watch tech tv when the screensavers was on there. But now its called gvtv, and it just sucks royally.

This whole getting paid to bookmark thing is no different then being an affiliate. You get paid to promote a product that you may or may not really like. Anyone who complains that someone is getting paid to do a little work should take all their ads off their blogs and do it for free.

Alls I know is that every story that I have ever submitted to digg is buried instantly, and on netscape I have a ton of stories on the front page. So you tell me which one is more democratic, another example of this kind of thing happening is look at forevergeek. They got banned for badmouthing digg, some democracy oriented site.

By: darkmoon

darkmoon — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 14:44:24 +0000

I think that it has to be repackaged a bit for mainstream to want it. I mean, what’s the point of say… my mom or dad, to “digg” a news story? I think that’s the key. I suppose celebrity type pics might do it, or rumors of movies and such, but even so the ones that have been set up aren’t doing so well.

I think that’s the problem with digg. From a perspective of technology, it’s empowering the people. But once you apply the business model to it and look for a reason to gain more user base, it loses its attractiveness. Plays against itself basically. I think.. no, I believe that is the reason why Slashdot never opened up to anything but technologically inclined news.

Some technologies were never meant for the mainstream. I think Digg is one of those. It is a generic based technology, but requires the user-base to drive it versus source-driven technologies such as podcasting/vlogging. I think that’s the key that people are missing. The user-base itself has to be well-polished for the technology, but only a few are like that. You might be able to get some sort of MySpace scenario going with Digg for a young people’s POV, but I’m not certain my younger cousins would actually use it. Very tricky market that I personally don’t care to compete in.