Digg CEO Adelson: Monetary Compensation Against Principles of Digg

“There will be recognition for the people who do a lot of work on the site, not just for being ranked a Top Digger. In the future, you’ll see other forms of recognition that are purely, you know, things that exist within the community. Certainly no monetary compensation or things like that”, said Digg CEO Jay Adelson.

I say, it’s great!… I think we should all try and keep this debate focused on the real issue: should the top users of social services like digg, Netscape, delicious, Flickr, Reddit, MySpace, AIMPages, etc. get paid for their work–or not.

Users are making digg what it is and the corporate backbone knows this and milks the hell out of it. Many people have a built in need to be part of a group, even if anonymous. People that post comments on blogs also work to build up a sites status and apparent popularity.My belief is that the Silicon Valley elite are going to make billions of dollars on the “wisdom of crowds” over the next five years, and that startups and established companies should figure out ways to compensate those top users (if they want to get paid of course).
Just because you are paid doesn’t mean you are any less a member of the community. There are paid firefighters and volunteers. Both provide great service to their communities… so one size does not fit all, and clearly both models work.

To focus on the article, Netscape can’t beat Digg because digg is the original and Netscapes brand is dead. Paying posters would not bring traffic to a brand that is like an old hag. When I think of Netscape I think of pop-ups.
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