Comments on: Kevin Rose and Jason Calacanis have a little spat

By: Blogs, Bloggers, and Blogfights at The Blog Herald

Blogs, Bloggers, and Blogfights at The Blog Herald — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 21:03:10 +0000

[...] Jan 5 at 7:01 pm by Markku Seguerra -Digg itWhat makes blogs and bloggers prone to blogfights? Wired just ran a story on the best blogfights of2006 and I’m sure most of us are aware of at least one of those listed. Remember Kevin Rose vs. Jason Calacanis? [...]

By: 347 words from digg’s Kevin Rose at twopointouch: web 2.0, blogs and social media

Sat, 12 Aug 2006 17:46:57 +0000

[...] Being the Elvis of Web 2.0 is a busy job, it seems. I’ve been stalking Kevin Rose of digg for about six weeks, watching him sign a girl’s chest, hit the cover of BusinessWeek and attempt to fend off attempts to hire the service’s most loyal users. And basically, not getting to interview him. It’s hard enough getting through to people on the West Coast from London. By the time they get out of bed, it’s time for me to go to the pub. I know that Kevin likes a pint, so maybe he’ll come over and we can finish the remaining fifteen questions of my interview in a more convivial setting. [...]

By: Ankit

Ankit — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 07:48:41 +0000

One thing Jason Calacanics is missing that the power doesn`t lies in the 100 or so community leaders, but the followers who follow these 100 community leaders. And one of the major reason why these people are followed by so many people other than finding quality news is their dedication to a social network in volunatiry manner.

Jason is already paying its dozen anchors, and I bet they are real smart people otherwise wouldn`t have been there, if these people are not able to get flocks of people then I am unsure how JS is thinking of getting herds of followers by buying dozen of Digg top users.

By: James

James — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 04:13:03 +0000

I disagree, and by reading this I’d almost think that Weblogs Inc. paid you to post this. Listen to the podcast…it was all light hearted and with drinking involed! They were having fun…and the fact is, Jason started this fight, not Kevin.

http://www.calacANUS.com

By: Paul Short

Paul Short — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 01:35:45 +0000

Ok, in addition to what I wrote above…

On Digg, the top 100 or so “power users” have gotten to where they are for 3 reasons:

1. They spend a lot of time there and are passionate about what they do

2. They love being in the spotlight and get tremendous satisfaction from having their stories hit the front page. It’s a sense of accomplishment.

3. and most importantly… the power users have been elevated to where they are by the rest of the community.

In any community there are layers of people. Some observe. Some people get involved by kissing the cool people’s butts. Some go off on their own, the majority play follow the leaders – those leaders are the power users.

The flaw in trying to buy the power users and thinking they can migrate over to another community, is – there’s NO #3 yet. The first 2 elements above can be incentivized. #3 can’t. Respect doesn’t just happen because someone is “placed” in a position of power. The respect has to be earned.

Let the community chose it’s own power users and you’ll have a much happier, more stable community.

Does any of that make sense?

By: Paul Short

Paul Short — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 01:09:24 +0000

The key to the success of Digg is the users are feeding each other great content and they all have the same power to elevate that content or bury it. It’s a collective and it’s obviously working.

Kevin Rose has simply given them the platform to do so, then tweaked and improved that platform based on users feedback and trends.

What Jason has done with netscape is apply a hierarchial structure to the concept rather than trusting the community to moderate itself. The concept may seem plausable but whether it works or not is still up in the air.

IMHO, Digg is better.

By: Jason Smith

Jason Smith — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 00:40:50 +0000

writes a blogger:

“I don’t know Jason Calacanis, but he’s starting to remind me of the rich kid in school who wasn’t particularly well liked but whose free-spending ways always kept a crowd around him. Since he sold Weblogs to AOL and joined the executive team, he’s been bragging about hanging with Ted Leonsis and making gushing carte blanche offers to attractive unemployed video blog hosts”

Is that a wad of cash in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?
http://blogs.siliconvalley.com/gmsv/2006/07/is_that_a_wad_o.html

By: Aaron

Aaron — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 00:13:23 +0000

David: b5 pays bloggers on a revenue-share basis. This is not the same as Digg. You’re comparing apples and oranges.

By: David Krug

David Krug — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 19:44:43 +0000

I could have sworn b5 pays its bloggers. Calacanis is acting more like the athletics in that he doesn’t pay jack diddlee.

By: Ted

Ted — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 16:37:55 +0000

Sorry, youv’e been wrong on this from day 1. Paying users destroys the community, it doesn’t enable it. Yes, you can get great links and sources if you pay users. But you lose community and at the end of the day community is what makes these sites cool and popular.