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Digg's Double-Cross

Doug used to dig Digg, but don't dig Digg no more. Doug used to dig Digg because his boy David dialed Doug in. Dang, but didn't Dave diss Digg's new move and douse his dad's delight.

OK, no more "d"-based alliteration. Here's the deal: Digg is an interesting site that gathers stories from other sources, and I've spotted a few that I've highlighted in this here newsletter. The main Digg site is just like our own RedmondReport.com; it highlights links and clicking on them takes you to the source site -- no scraping and no stealing.

The same David that got me into Digg told me about the new Digg toolbar, which is more of a closed system. When you click on a story -- it may even be written by me -- it opens in a window within Digg itself.

I know how my company's contracts work and I don't remember myself giving my employer all rights, and then doing the same for Digg. Trade publishers already provide free content. But when did this extend to competitors who turn our stories into free cash?

Google is still making billions from others' content. For example, let's say you search on "Active Directory." Even though hundreds of results are from Microsoft, it's Google that takes the ad money from the search pages. Even if you did an AD search after getting excited about stories from the Web site of my magazine. The parasites make the easy dough.

What do you make of all this, and what's your favorite aggregation site? My favorite destination site is RedmondReport.com. Check it out and let me know what you think! Send thoughts and URLs to dbarney@redmondmag.com.

Posted by Doug Barney on 06/29/2009 at 12:09 PM


Reader Comments:

Sat, Jun 4, 2011 DonaldsonSally

That's understandable that money can make us independent. But what to do when one doesn't have cash? The one way is to receive the http://b DOT estfinance-blog.com and car loan.

Mon, Jun 29, 2009

Well, your use of the word parasite is certainly enlightening to *your* point of view. I would call it more symbiotic. Without a way to find your article it may as well be put in a bottle in the ocean when you consider the vastness of information available. Without your article (and other content) Google would have nothing to sort, rank and deliver.

As far as Digg's toolbar. Your site is no more "in Digg's site" than it is "in your browser" or "in your computer's window" or "in your house". Their toolbar isn't that invasive and provides a readily accessible link to the original URL. The nice thing that I see about it is that Digg can start to calculate the network effect of the traffic they sent to you by people forwarding those links via email and other channels. Most important for the content maker the visitors can Digg the article from right there. That is *powerful* since they don't have to return to Digg to promote your articel and every Digg does just that. Hopefully it makes Digg a better tool.

Mon, Jun 29, 2009 Dave Central Reality

"Google is still making billions from others' content. For example, let's say you search on "Active Directory." Even though hundreds of results are from Microsoft, it's Google that takes the ad money from the search pages. Even if you did an AD search after getting excited about stories from the Web site of my magazine. The parasites make the easy dough."

Who supplies the database to allow you to find all that data? The metadata to get to the content is worth more than the content. Google can give it away because the advertising pays for it. I notice that Microsoft has no problem holding out their hand when I use Bing for a search.

Who can sort 1 petabyte of data with in six hours and two minutes to sort 1PB (10 trillion 100-byte records) on 4,000 computers and the results were replicated three times on 48,000 disks? Give Google its due; it has dominated the search market like Microsoft has dominated the office software by "out-innovating" the competition.

Mon, Jun 29, 2009

Um... come again?

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