The digg topic What motivates the top one percent of digg’s users? has stirred up a hornet’s nest. The top-rated answer right now is “The urge to fit into society by boosting a [sic] e-penis with 35% growth” by dshPls. I think you sort of know what he means.
The suggestion is that only one percent of the users of social media sites are actually significant contributors. (Thanks, Antony. Thanks, Ben). At the more trendy sites, like digg, the percentage is more like 0.1. The top users at digg have are thought to have more sway, being community leaders, than others. That introduces an odd dichotomy. Is this a social site (and therefore leaders develop) or a democracy (which appears to be digg’s ideal)?
All this criticism and flaming. It’s a really odd thing, though, isn’t it? The majority of digg’s community seem to be saying that contributing a lot is a really negative, unhealthy thing. A sample of some of the snarky comments: “50% Obsessive Compulsive Disorder; 50% Delusions of grandeur”; “Because they feel the need of love and friends, maybe because there is not enough in their “real” life.”; “Latent homosexuality”. Analyse that how you will. Jealousy? Frustration? Anger? Genuine bemusement? Whatever your conclusions turn out to be, contributions and votes are the site’s life blood.
Bloodjunkie, meanwhile, [the second most popular user on digg and the guy who started the thread in question] describes his motivation thus: “The community motivates me. Sharing interesting, useful or entertaining content with people who share my interests on a daily basis is why I contribute.” I can’t help but applaud that.
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I don’t think it’s the contributing of links that has some people riled up but rather the perception that there is a club of people who Digg each other’s submissions religiously, resulting in almost an old-boys-club you-do-for-me-I’ll-do-for-you system that gets its stories and messages much more attention than anyone elses.
Whether that is true or not — I don’t know. Is it?
Hi John. I know what you’re saying. And it again brings up the paradox of digg being both a social network and a democracy. In a social network, there will be trend-setters. In a democracy, that *shouldn’t* matter.
Isn’t this scarily like real life in a democracy? Is digg reaching adolescence here?
I believe an unstructured social hierarchy (nee online social network) will always behave like this given the time and numbers. It’s a case of a hierarchy of contributors forming, just as they boss the school playground and other arbitrarily thrown together groups.
The Digg site only exists and succeeds because of the contributions of its most active members. It’s crazy that this same group should now receive negative comments from those they have directly benefited with their high levels of activity. Isn’t this just a case of envy and a naive expectation that Digg should be something it could never be — i.e. a perpetual level playing field? It’s predictably evolving from a balanced community to a very strict and rigid hierarchy just as AuctionWebb (now eBay) did.
Envy and naivety about hierarchies are probably as natural and predictable in social groups, indeed any groups of humans, as the hierarchies themselves.
I disagree that the emerging hierarchies are rigid, though — they are open to challenge and change just like hierarchies in most other groups, from companies to playground gangs.
We shouldn’t worry about hierarchies in social media emerging — we’re hard-wired for that shit, its when there is a lack of fluidity and friction in the pecking orders that groups, organisations, structures begin to to become less useful and then die. Stagnation usually means they’ve run out of ideas and the ability to create new ones.
I spoke to Tim O’Reilly yesterday [you name-dropping bastard, Delaney. I’ll write it up in a couple of days]. He was saying that kludges that are, for most people, “good enough”, like the WWW or wikipedia, will ultimately win out over perfect plans.
To me, digg is a kludge that works. The users are dissatisfied, but not dissatisfied enough to move to a rival site. Despite 200 clones and arguably improved models, the social capital is worth far more than the software, as it turns out.
I’ll be very interested in the first pay-the-contributor digg clone, though. If it isn’t Netscape, someone else will have a go. Some paid blog networks work very well (Gawker, Weblogs), others don’t seem to work at all. Working out the ‘secret sauce’ to that will make someone very rich.
Update: Calacanis has hired his first ten ‘Netscape Navigators’
http://www.calacanis.com/2006/08/02/the-first-10-navigators-weve-hired-three-of-the-top-12-digg-us/
[…] Update: This post showed up on the front page of Digg yesterday (thanks Bloodjunkie), and it sparked a — let’s say interesting — round of 100+ comments within the Digg community. Ian Delaney sorts through some of them. […]
[…] Alex Bosworth commented that friends engage in tit-for-tat co-operation when it comes to diggs. He suddenly noticed that his 39 ‘friends’ — none of whom he’d communicated with — were voting for the same stories as him. As I’ve posted elsewhere, digg is both a social network and a news voting site. There’s a vested interest in voting for the sites proposed by your clan, since it means that the sites you submit yourself stand a greater chance of promotion. In some cases, such as where clans are formed from pressure groups, co-operation comes from the common interest of the entire group. Of course, not all digg users realise they are in a clan by having friends, but the end result may be the same as if they did. […]