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 [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on June 29, 2009