If you haven’t been following the Social Networking craze this story will either bore you to death or make your thinker tick. It had my thinker working overtime.
Recently, a website was launched with the intention of building a network of “Diggers” to go and Digg stories for the purpose of gaming the system over at Digg.com.
The website, SpikeTheVote.com, generated a lot of buzz with it’s launch and even got a plug on CNET and TechCrunch. It was squaring off to be a big ticket for Diggers looking to cheat the community. From what I can find, the owner ended up realizing the set up was not profitable, therefor it probably wasn’t worth the work required so he after only a week online he posted it for sale on e-Bay.
Here’s the kicker…
Jim Messenger of FamousAgents.com bought the site and then donated it to Digg. Digg, in turn, almost immediately banned 700 Digg accounts using the data it received with the site files.
Well, my first thought is “good! now maybe BS stories will get buried behind the better submissions”. But after some careful thinking I remembered how close I was to signing up just to see what all the hubbub was about. I have a Digg account, but I rarely submit anything to it and hardly ever vote on anything, but I still find a TON of good information and surf the site religiously.
So I wanted to know what it was all about. What was this guy up to and how was it going to work? You know… curiosity.
I’m lucky I was busy that day and didn’t sign up because I would probably find myself locked out of my Digg account had I made the move.
But this begs the question… did Digg do the right thing? I mean, how did they know all of these users wanted to actually use the system to manipulate Digg results?
I think Digg should have used the data to search out the spammers, not just assume everyone was guilty.
Am I wrong?
Technorati Tags: Digg, spike+the+vote, Jim+Messenger
