It looks like three digg users have taken Jason Calacanis’ offer and are now being paid $1000 a month to add social news content to Netscape.
Top digg users BloodJunkie, DirtyFratBoy, and Wayjer have all accepted the paying gig, and quite a few notable digg users seem to have joined up on Netscape, as well, though not as paid content providers.
The best comment I’ve seen so far regarding this news actually comes from Calacanis himself, from his blog post (linked above):
UPDATE1: There is a story on DIGG about the new Navigators here. The DIGG community is supporting the three users who have left DIGG for Netscape!
UPDATE2: There is a Netscape story about the new Navigators here.
He is actually surprised by the fact that digg users are supportive of fellow digg users. This conclusively demonstrates that the man has absolutely no clue what sites like digg and Netscape are all about. You see, these are social news sites. And the word social is in there as more than a clever web 2.0 marketing buzz term. “Social” denotes that there are actual people interacting on a personal level. These top digg contributors didn’t become famous submitting content to digg — they became liked and respected. That whole social aspect of “social news” means that people actually get to know each other. And when something good happens in their lives, their friends share in their good fortune. You take digg or Netscape or Reddit or del.icio.us or any other social site out there — remove the content and design — and you have the basic principle of people using a website to share experiences and become involved in other people’s lives.
I don’t think digg will somehow fail because these users have left, and I don’t necessarily think Netscape will suddenly take off because these users are now over there. It could happen, but I don’t think it will. New users will fill in the gaps and gain more recognition, and new social relationships will be built and generate a new network of friends sharing content in all the websites.
The difference will be that at digg, the social experience will be genuine, whereas at Netscape, it will be manufactured. And that difference will be yet another thing that Calacanis will never, ever be able to understand.