A lot of folks have been telling me their emailing and IMing Mahalo links around the web--especially for things like travel and people like their parents (btw: your parents will love Mahalo).

A number of folks asked us why we didn't have social sharing sites like delicious, reddit, Facebook, and Stumbleupon. We thought about that for a second and realized there was no reason why we didn't have those services so we just added them under the "clean URLs."

[ Sidenote: Clean URLs is our project to make the shortest possible URLs for folks who like to type in mahalo.com/SEARCHTERM. I'm one of these odd folks who likes to save a couple of keystrokes. ]

We didn't add Netscape or digg because those sites specialize in news and we thought the communities there might not be interested in sharing curated search results. If we're wrong I'm sure we'll find out when people post our curated results to those services.

Great story in the WSJ about the buzz being generated by the top users at digg, Reddit, Newsvine, delicious, stumbleupon, and of course Netscape. The article really shows how the top users in these systems have become more than just "users," and the WSJ seems to really get that folks can be paid to do a job and not be corrupted.

Of course, when you pay people to do an editorial job you have setup a system for them to do so without compromising their ethics. We did this at Netscape by letting the Navigators blog/bookmark things they selected (i.e. unlike PayPerPost we didn't tell people what to blog about--let alone tell them it had to a be a positive result).

AOL is really doing a great job of supporting Netscape from what I can see. They haven't cut the budget, and it seems that the tech roadmap that we setup when I was there is being executed on brilliantly (it really is an amazing tech team over there!). The Netscape 9 browsers is ground breaking no many levels, and the stats from Netscape six months in are *exactly* like digg's after six months (250,000 stories and 150,000 members @ Netscape--not to shabby!).

AOL is sitting on a powerhouse with Netscape and I hope the give it a full two year runway because that's what it takes to build a community system like this. Netscape is the #1 or #2 social news system in the world and AOL owns 100% of it--that's big. CondeNast owns the #3 system with Reddit, and digg is probably gonna get snapped up by Yahoo, Google, or Newscorp I'm sure. So, AOL got essentially a free foothold in this emerging space because Jon Miller, Ted Leonsis, and Jim Bankoff made a long-term bet that is *just* starting to pay off.

I really hope Randy Falco, Ron Grant, and the new team over there let Netscape continue to grow because these systems could wind up being the core of the next generation portals.

My plan was to go to 50 Navigators with six months, and I think Netscape is at around 25. I highly encourage the team over there to get right to 50 Navigators @ $1,000 a month and then start a second program with 200 Navigators at $500 a month. This second group of Navigators who have a lower hurdle of work (say 100 stories per month baseline), but would be focused on the 30 channels. So, you would have 250 Navigators total with 6-10 on each channel. This would make the channels full and give Netscape a chance--for only $250,000 a month--to really own the broad social news space.

As the story showed digg, reddit, delicious, and Newsvine are the perfect place to look for emerging talent and pay them.

If I was CEO of StumbleUpon I would raise $10M and pay the top 250 folks $500 a month for contributing to the system. It would make the system go off the charts.

Anyway, I'm out of the social news business... although I wish I wasn't I really love what Netscape's doing and I talk to members of the team and community over there on a daily basis.

PS - The 9.0 browser is amazing!!! Great job... don't forget my News drop down menu!

Wow.

Like wow, wow.

Today's Kevin Rose announced that he is taking down the top users list at digg because of the top diggers are getting blamed by "some outlets" (I guess that would be news outlets) as the cause of manipulation on digg.

Well, truth be told if you take the negative baggage out of the world manipulate and just look at it as "to change something" it is very true that the top users change (aka manipulate) digg. The whole concept of social news/bookmarking is that users can have an impact. So, those outlets are 100% correct that the top users control much of what you see on digg, and the users are not at fault for trying to have an impact.

The problem really is that there is a perception that those users rule digg--and in fact they rule somewhere between 1/3rd and 1/2 of digg from what I can see.

Most of the top users I've talked to over the years are very, very driven by that top list. They want to climb higher, they talk about strategies to climb the rankings, they build tools to get to stories first, and they lament their inability to sustain their position when they fall.

digg motivated the top users in the system with recognition and now that digg is "at scale" they really don't need this rabid group any more. In fact, the value of a motivated top 100 and their never-ending quest to climb the rankings is not worth the negative impact and press it has on digg is what I'm hearing from Kevin. digg wants to shake the fact that the top stories are controlled by a select group of individuals and this is not the first step in that direction. Remember digg already dinged people for going direct to the permalink to vote (as opposed from the on deck circle).

This is the gift and curse of social news... your existence is based on user participation, and your existence can be destroyed by certain types of user participation (i.e. spam, payola, gaming).

Of course, since digg has an API isn't this all moot?! Won't someone create a top-user list in 10 minutes after digg shuts their list down?


I applaud Kevin for making the bold move, but I don't think this one has legs. I think the top users deserve their recognition and if Kevin is not paying them for their thousands of hours a work and year AND not paying them with recognition what's left?!

The driving forces in these system are (in order:

1. recognition
2. affiliation
3. compensation

All that digg really has left now is affiliation, and the question is will that be enough. I wish him luck.

I don't know Randy Falco or Ron Grant, but I wish them luck. The NYT says they have a long view of AOL, everything I read says AOL's is going to be cleaned up and sold.

My advice to both men: start blogging today. AOL was a very closed culture when we got there a year ago, and blogging is what really pulled the company into the Web world. There are dozens of important folks in the company having honest discussions on blogs and the best way for you two to build AOL is to embrace the culture of honesty, transparency, and debate. Blogging is the best medium for this. Take a page from Microsoft and let all your team members blog, and even pay some folks to be company bloggers. Let it all hang out, let the marketplace tell you where to go, and be open about everything--the good and the bad.

Even though I was at AOL for only a year it felt like home. ~50 members of "my team" are still rocking it out at Netscape, WeblogsInc, and Blogsmith, and I really hope the new guys recognize the amazing potential those groups have and continue to invest in them.

Weblogs, Inc. has grown into an eight figure business at AOL over the past year and I think it could be a nine figure business if they keep investing in it. Easily.

Netscape has continued to advance and grow since the bottom out in October. It takes 2-3 years to build an online community like Netscape, not three to six months. Social news is the future and Netscape is in first or second position on every important factor in that race (along with digg). To give up now would be such a wasted opportunity (especially since there are 500 folks trying to get into the top five slots right now!). I mean, Conde Nast just bought reddit--a distant 3rd or 4th to Netscape and digg.

Blogsmith is a fantastic platform that could rival TypePad and WordPress in the market place if AOL put some muscle behind it. Brian is a genius and AOL should really pull him in to the senior management team--guys like him don't wind up in big companies often.

Anyway, I've got to get back to my day job... I don't work for AOL anymore but I still spend 2-3 hours a day thinking about and talking to the folks who run those businesses. Giving them advice (solicited and unsolicited), and participating in and using those fine services and products.

Randy & Ron: If you every need any free advice on them or want to grab lunch you know how to reach me. Good luck and please take care of my babies. :-)

As we all know I'm no longer working on Netscape. So, these are my observations as someone who is no longer affiliated with the service. I've figured out exactly how you can get almost any quality story on the home page instantly.

For Netscape

1. Step One: Add the top 20-30 users on the service as friends. (Approximate time: 10 minutes). The top users are located on the home page on the bottom right.
2. Step Two: Add the Netscape sidebar on Firefox so you can follow your new friends (Approximate Time: 2 minutes)
3. Step Three: Vote for the stories of the top 30 users and place intelligent/fun comments on their stories (Approximate time: 30 minutes).
   
4. Step Four: Find a good story and submit it. Tip, try to avoid politics and news channels since they are the most crowded. (Approximate time: 5 minutes).
   
5. Step Five: Sitemail your friends the url of the story and say "check this one out!" (Approximate time: 1 minute). NOTE: Do not spam your "friends" list with sitemail or they will block you. I think maybe once or twice a month is fine. Once or twice a week might get annoying. Really depends on how your friends view you and what they think of the stories you submit. If they are good users they probably have the sidebar and are watching your activity already.
   

Total time: About an hour.


For digg:

[ I'll write this one up next. It's harder for digg obviously... but the key is of course to become friends with at least 30 people on the service by voting for and commenting on their stories. Yes, it is a popularity contest on a certain level. ]

I'd like to try and out the advertisers and marketing firms on digg (and maybe even Netscape, who knows) that are paying folks to submit news for them. If you know of a firm doing this send me their name, the email they sent you, the URL of the story on digg/netscape, and/or who they are paying.

If your tip pans out I'll send you $100 via paypal. Yep, I'll pay you for ratting these folks out.

I will also keep your submission 100% confidential.

Also, if you've been paid for doing this in the past I'll also keep your information 100% confidential. Remember, I don't work at Netscape any more so I'm basically a very interested 3rd party. I just want to understand what these folks are doing.

You can send the emails to my personal account jason at calacanis dot com.

Again, 100% confidential. Let the madness begin. :-)

Update: Mulife does an excellent job of explaining exactly how this mess started. In this case it wasn't a straight up cash for diggs situation, but rather some offers for free service (which were not taken). SuperNova17 did have his account banned, he did do a redirect (a big no-no), and digg did reinstate him after he apologized. That being said, I still have a PR firm that claims they are paying people cash, and the CNET reports are still out there. Clearly this is one of a number of instances and the best thing we can do as a community is to put sunlight on them. best j

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, this cost me $100... but it *might* be worth it.

NOTE: I don't have any of the facts confirmed here yet. I'm looking for verification of these facts from anyone else who got the email, digg, JetNumbers.com Kevin Rose, and SuperNova 17. THIS IN UNCONFIRMED. CONSIDER THIS INFORMATION INCORRECT UNTIL WE ALL GET CONFIRMATION.

I was just told--and I don't know if this is true yet--that digg's number five user named SuperNova17 took the offer, was caught by digg, and had his account killed. He later apologized and had his account restated.

SuperNova17 did submit a story bout JetNumbers here:

http://digg.com/tech_deals/JetNumbers_New_Approach_to_Virtual_Telephone_Numbers



The story links to http://elagora.com/numbers.html which redirects to JetNumbers.com.

Note: Do you know anyone doing this on Netscape or Reddit?

Here is the reported email--again, this could all be a scam.


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Nathan Schorr <nathan@jetnumbers.com>
Date: Dec 7, 2006 12:15 PM
Subject: Using your ranking on Digg, work with us and get somethng out of it
To: [A TOP DIGG USERS]

Netscape's traffic has been going up over the past three months in a major way, and I think it's because of three main reasons:

• a) the community is learning how to use the site
• b) the tech folks are adding amazing features
• c) the home page has now been balanced to have no more than 2-3 stories from each channel (i.e. it's not all politics all day long any more).
• d) we solved the spam/group voting problems (by adding a bunch of very talented Navigators!)

Today the tech team launched two extensions we were working on for the past month--AND THEY ARE AMAZING!

Oh wait... I don't work at Netscape any more. :-)

I'm so proud of the team over there... Netscape is going to double in traffic over the first year--you heard it hear first!

best j


From the Netscape blog:


Today we released two Firefox extensions that hook into Netscape.com: the Sitemail Notifier extension and the Friends' Activity Sidebar. We hope that these extensions will allow you to get even more value out of Netscape. Both extensions are compatible with Firefox 1.5 through 2.0.0.* as well as the latest release of Flock.

Sitemail Notifier

The Sitemail Notifier extension adds a button (shown below) to your toolbar that indicates when you have new sitemail messages at Netscape.com. Clicking the button will bring you to your messages page.


Figure 1: The two main states of the sitemail button.

Friends' Activity Sidebar

The Friends' Activity Sidebar (FAS) extension helps you keep tabs on what stories your Netscape friends are submitting and commenting on. A new toolbar button (shown below) features Chad, the older, more mature brother of AOL's little yellow chat mascot. When there is new activity by your friends (i.e., a new comment or a new story submission), the button will be activated and Chad will send a friendly wave your way. Clicking on the activated button will open a list of your friends' activity in the sidebar, allowing you to easily browse their stories and comments. Each time you view your friends' activity, you will only be shown activity that is new since the last time you opened the sidebar.


Figure 2: The two main states of the FAS button.

Note: The sidebar limits activity to five stories/comments for each friend. To view more of a friend's recent activity, click on their avatar or username to be sent to that friend's profile.


Figure 3: The Friends' Activity Sidebar

Suggestions for future extensions or improvements on these extensions are most definitely welcome.

I just added another page to the Wikipedia: social news.

Social news is obviously very different than social bookmarking, which is already in the wikipedia.

It would be great if folks could help me expand the topic.

CalacanisCast Beta Five... if you have feedback please send me an MP3 or WAV file.

No show notes--ever!

Here is the MP3 file

If you want to subscribe go into iTunes and hit "Advanced -- Subscribe to Podcast" add this feed:

http://podcast.calacanis.com/rss.xml

TechCrunch broke the story (less than two hours after I told everyone here), and the New York Times confirmed it with me by phone this afternoon.

I've got a lot to say, but I'm thinking that I'll just talk about it on the final episode of the Gillmor Gang podcast--which we happen to be doing tomorrow (crazy coincidence I know).

Your pal,

Jason

PS - Thanks to everyone sending emails, IMing, and calling.

Update: Fun times from Hugh... and my partner Brian Alvey always has quip ready to go!

A very enthusiastic journo from NewAssignment called me to discuss how we were revolutionizing the media with Netscape. I tried to talked him down a little and let him know that at this point MetaJ is best described as an experiment right now. We're not even in the first inning of metaJ right now--in fact right now we're trying to figure out how the game is even played!

http://www.newassignment.net/blog/david_cohn/metajournalism_netscapes_approach
Baby steps... baby steps.

If you want to be successful in life hire brilliant people and get the hell out of their way...

Watch the highres version (Flash is so ugly!)

CK does a great overview on how tags work on Netscape on the Netscape blog.

Tags are in this format:

http://www.netscape.com/tag/ipod/

Every Tag has an RSS feed

http://www.netscape.com/tag/ipod/rss/

... and RSS feeds include enclosures so you can add them to iTunes (or other Podcasting software for the .0001% of you who use something else!).

Subscribe to this rss feed if you have a huge hard drive:
http://www.netscape.com/video/rss

One thing I've been pushing for at AOL since I got here almost a year ago (wow, has it been that long?!??!) is a light version of AIM. Ted Leonsis, Jim Bankoff, and Jon Miller and I have had countless discussions about the issue and we've made huge progress.... this is really the future of AOL: light, fast, free products that compliment our bigger, more feature-rich products.

Elite folks don't want all the features in our mass market products--we know that.

Now that we're 1,000% focused on being an audience-based business (as opposed to an *access* business) there is no debate anymore. We have to make light, fast products for the A-listers. AOL has been a brand has been for the mass market, and it will still be, but we're ALSO going to have products for the elite users. Netscape, Light AIM, XDRIVE, and Weblogs, Inc's blogs are for elite users (as well as the mass market).

Over at the Greehouse they are now playing with "Light AIM" or "AIM Light" --or whatever we wind up calling this bad boy. I've had it for a while and it ROCKS. If your mom is on a three year old machine and the new feature-rich AIM Client is grinding her machine to a halt (not our fault!) go download AIM ES here: http://greenhouse.aol.com/prod.jsp?prod_id=27

AIM Light has no ads, no VOIP, no file-transfer, and a TINY footprint... in fact, I think it is the lightest IM client you run on your machine. This is something you could run on OLPC level machine (yes, I know it's a Windows product right now, but you get the idea).

Drop everything and go play with it... this is the future of AOL: light, open, cutting-edge, and elite AS WELL AS mass market.