digg sellouts

As the fallout dust is still settling from the launch of services like PayPerPost and ReviewMe.com, and the integrity of the blogosphere has come under fire, other services are following suit.

According to the MyContentWebsite blog, Digg is the latest service to be unassumingly monetized in this fashion. His blog states that people are actually selling "diggs" for as low as 10 cents each now. For a site that depends on its users honest interest in a site to accumulate diggs, this will likely introduce a new set of ethical debates. Some may argue that PayPerPost's service is doing the same thing with the integrity of Google or Yahoo's organic listings, but search engines at least have their own algorithms to determine search rankings and their listings aren't solely based on external links that could be inflated by services such as PPP.

Digg, on the other hand, is entirely based on their ability to rank sites based on the number of "diggs", so it will be interesting to see how the site will fare with users and investors as the "payfordiggs" model becomes more widespread. I would imagine that the first step to be taken would be to make paid diggs against their terms of service, and to cancel any account (and its diggs) for trying to profit in that way. This would take care of the bigger problems, but there would still be underground diggs that could be bought, and will probably be a source of constant headaches for the managers of digg. however, if its kept underground, it is also kept from public view, and therefore, from the view of users and investors/advertisers.

The MyContentWebsite blog features quality website content covering topics such as programming, design marketing, advertising, and (of course) web content. A newcomer to the scene, the blog has been around since October 2006, but its articles cover a number of topics useful to internet marketers, web designers, content and site builders, and anyone like myself who dabbles in all of the above.