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Three Good Reasons Not to Buy Digg

Digg recently ended acquisition talks with Rupert Murdoch's News Corp after negotiations broke down over the asking price of $150M. Digg will apparently now seek another round of funding instead.

Beyond price, the main bone of contention seemed to have been Digg's traffic statistics. Digg maintains it has about 20 million unique visitors, while comScore says the number is closer to 1.3 million.

But the traffic question isn't really a good reason to be wary of purchasing Digg. The real uncertainties arise when you weigh the costs and benefits of maintaining a community that has high expectations.

Three Reasons Not to Buy

1. Paying for users. Digg may be a phenomenol community that builds value for free right now, but eventually users will expect to be paid. While pay might not take the same form as on Netscape, the signs that users are beginning to understand attention economics are evident in everything from Metacafe's Producer Rewards to Newsvine and Revver's ad share arrangements. Any company that purchases Digg is making that purchase before the mature economics of the situation are known.
2. Maintaining the community. Digg is a nifty site, but the technology isn't that revolutionary, or at least not hard to mimic. Buying Digg means buying several million independent users who probably won't like anything you do to change the site. While Digg has cultural cache, it would be easy for the users to migrate elsewhere.
3. Easily replicated business. Don't get me wrong, Kevin's site is amazing and certainly changed the way news is consumed online. But the technology behind the site isn't hard to mimic. I would expect that MySpace would implement a news ranking system with or without buying Digg. After all, they already do it with videos.
   

Six Apart Announces Movable Type Enterprise 1.5

I spoke with Anil Dash of Six Apart and Movable Type General Manager Chris Alden (formerly of Rojo) last Friday about the news that Six Apart was releasing Movable Type Enterprise 1.5. The latest version is available now. Screenshots below.

I've been using Movable Type in some form or another since 2002, which I think is when Six Apart was still shipping version 2.x of the consumer version. These days I use TypePad, but that's another story. Features in Movable Type Enterprise 1.5 include:

• support for multiple blogs and authors, up to 10,000 blogs or more
• expanded groups, roles and permissions capability
• integration with LDAP. No more multiple screen names and sign-ons. Woot.
• integration with SQL Server, PostGres, Oracle (Movable Type has always been good supporting multiple DBs)
• multi-blog aggregation - pull together multiple blogs (sales, marketing, etc.) and bring them together in splash pages
• Windows-based installer, Unix-based installer
• easy blog cloning
• AJAX interface to multi-select users, role, contextual search (Anil said he hated to say AJAX, but it's true)
• common management tasks have RSS feeds

Netscape is Still Hiring Anchors (and the pay ain't bad)

Looks like Netscape is still hiring anchors for its redesigned site. I thought they were done, but no. The location is SF and the pay is 45k-60k based on experience, not bad for a beginning journo-quasi-blogger/editor.

Experienced Reporters for Netscape.com

---

Reply to: job-212266852@craigslist.org
Date: 2006-09-25, 7:10PM PDT


We're hiring two Netscape Anchors to knock out great Anchor Commentary on Netscape.com. Daily Newspaper or Internet Experience required, knowledge of AP style and political and news reporting background a plus. Experience with video a plus. Work from home. This position is a fulltime salaried position with AOL, LLC. If you are interested, please contact with a resume, cover letter, and sample writing / clips.

• Compensation: 45K-60K depending upon location / experience + benefits
  
• Telecommuting is ok.

Opening Facebook to the Whole Wide Web is a Mistake

Facebook mimics the closed social structure of a university. You are with your friends at all times. You ruin that dynamic, you ruin Facebook....(read more)

Online Ad Spending Grows 37% Year Over Year

But quarter over quarter this year, Q1 to Q2, revenues only increased 5.5%....(read more)

Adobe adds Flash to Acrobat 8 Pro

Acrobat 8 includes better forms, a better redaction tool, and web conferencing through Adobe Connect (formerly Macromedia's Breeze)....(read more)

Streaming Media West -- we're moderating a panel

And by we I mean "I," and by moderate I mean crap, I've never done that before. Luckily it's the very last panel on the 4th day of the Streaming Media West conference in San Jose, assuring that no one will see me make an ass out of myself.

The panel is On-Demand Entertainment Content, and the panel members include Carl Crabill, VP, Sales and marketing for Moviebeam; Jeffrey Volk, GM advanced media, US Open; and Mike Gordon, co-founder and CSO of Limelight Networks.

So go register for the conference. I'll be there for the rest of the time too.

Microsoft Releases beta of photo-sharing app "Max"

The WPF demo application looks slick, even if it combines some odd features such as photo-sharing via e-mail and RSS feeds with no OPML import/export option....(read more)

Adobe and Opera Partner on Mobile Flash

Found this in my inbox this morning: The Opera for Devices SDK now supports Adobe's Flash Player 7 SDK, Adobe's Flash technology for consumer mobile devices.

Opera customers who run the full Opera browser on portable media players, HDTVs, set-top boxes and game consoles have the option to include Flash content.

Opera is touting the Nokia 770, which features the Opera browser with Flash integrated. The Flash Player 7 SDK is available for new products by request only, the release says. More info here.

Microsoft Expression Web Designer drops FrontPage Support, goes Beta

The WYSIWYG web design software and competitor to Dreamweaver no longer supports the creation of FrontPage files...(read more)

Want a Kick Ass Online Video Site? Focus on Older Users

Sean Carton: The achilles heel (from a marketing and revenue standpoint) of existing online video sites is that they're so focused on the youth market. There's a whole huge demographic of older Web users (like, you know, older than 18...duh!) who want video content that speaks to them....(read more)

YouTube: Better than Homeland Security?

An interesting article in the Washington Post today about YouTube's role in addressing security flaws in a fleet of refurbished Coast Guard ships. The video (which the Post doesn't link to?!?) was created by a contractor who worked on the ships.

When the Post printed the article, the video had been viewed about 8k times. Now it's up to 37k.

Why Does Google Pitch Product News to MSM, Not Blogs?

If Google has a smart PR department (and I think, for the most part, they do), they pick and choose where they want their news to land. They try to burnish their veneer as one of the most prestigious tech companies in the world. Hence, the New York Times....(read more)

Sony Buys Video-Sharing Site Grouper for $65M

The traffic doesn't justify the price tag, so the acquisition is probably about the company's management and its software....(read more)