Money, Power, and Web 2.0
We all know "teh internets" is serious business. And Web 2.0 is doubly so..because it's twice as serious as web 1.0. Companies and people are always trying to find a way to target ads correctly to the public. We've learned to ignore them, hide them and filter them. But what happens when the ads are not in plain sight. What happens when we think we're seeing news, but we are really seeing agenda or faux advertisments. We'll talk about that in a second. A big factor in the world of web traffic is the "Slashdot Effect" and now in the web 2.0 world, the "Digg Effect". To sum up, you get a story posted on one of these pages, and traffic to your site will soar, and possibly set your server on fire. Why would anyone want this though, sounds painful. The first thing you have to understand is readership. Slashdot, Digg and other pages like it, command huge followings. Thousands? Try Hundreds of thousands. How much would it be worth to have a few hundred thousand people see your ad and click on it? Quite a bit. 500K clicks to your web page nothing to laugh at.
One thing to note is that these web pages are community driven. People, anyone, submits stories and they get posted. Slashdot has a group editors that post stories for the users, while Digg allows anyone to post anything. If the story is good enough it makes it to the front page of Slashdot or Digg's top 10. These stories can be up there for a good 12 hours or more, command click after click.
Slashdot first took advantage of this to help pay for the site. It decided to start posting "Adver-stories", or fake articles about a product. Basically a company gives Slashdot some money, and Slashdot takes a story and publishes on their front page in the form of a new article or "cool must have item". A lot of readers can spot this and are ok with it, knowing it's just an ad. Digg on the other hand is all user based and has no need for this form of revenue generation. The fatal flaw in Digg is the fact that humans are fallible and even more easily swayed by monetary compensation. After reading about the concept on Uncov, I looked into it and realized the concept is good...pay people to get stories bumped to the top. Buy your way into the eyes of the public. The concept is as old as time. Grease the wheels and you can get far.
Web 2.0 is based off the concept of community driven content. It's social networking around a service. Twitter, Stumbleupon, Digg all are based off content some 13 year old kid posted, or some random politician posted. We trust these site, we trust that the content is genuine because it's written by me, my buddy, some internet friend in Arkansas or something. But since the fact remains that humans can be swayed with cash pretty easily, what's to stop someone from using the system for their own gain, or political gain. Here's an example (totally random, don't read into it):
Republican posts stories/text on Digg, Twitter, Stumpleupon, wordpress and 20 other places stating that a rival democrat is a drug abuser.
Democrat posts stories/text on Digg, Twitter, Stumpleupon, wordpress and 20 other places stating that a rival republican is a drug abuser.
So at this point, it's in the hands of the public. But remember, at this point all these stories are buried and the half a million viewers won't see it unless it gets voted into the top 10. So chances are no one will read these stories, or at most a few hundred. Now in steps the middle man, who can change the game. A webpage that pays people to give up their votes on pages like Digg for cash. Let's continue.
A group working for the Republican sets up an account on one of these pages and gives them a list of 5-6 web pages they need hits on. The web page passes out these pages via emails to their user base and the users go use up their votes.
It only takes a few hundred to vote a story up to the top. And then everyone will see it. Soon hundreds of thousands click the link and read the article. Articles like this sometimes get linked to, and end up on Google News which has an even larger reader base.
This was obviously an extreme case, but let's look at it realistically. This is already happening with stories, people pay per click to get stories up, but think of the power you can wield politically with the techno crowd which commands a huge following. You can't police the people's votes and money talks. In this scenario, a politician has purchased half a million ears/eyes to their story, and the democrat was never heard.
So ask yourself, since teh internets is such a serious business, who can you trust when you can buy popularity.
One thing to note is that these web pages are community driven. People, anyone, submits stories and they get posted. Slashdot has a group editors that post stories for the users, while Digg allows anyone to post anything. If the story is good enough it makes it to the front page of Slashdot or Digg's top 10. These stories can be up there for a good 12 hours or more, command click after click.
Slashdot first took advantage of this to help pay for the site. It decided to start posting "Adver-stories", or fake articles about a product. Basically a company gives Slashdot some money, and Slashdot takes a story and publishes on their front page in the form of a new article or "cool must have item". A lot of readers can spot this and are ok with it, knowing it's just an ad. Digg on the other hand is all user based and has no need for this form of revenue generation. The fatal flaw in Digg is the fact that humans are fallible and even more easily swayed by monetary compensation. After reading about the concept on Uncov, I looked into it and realized the concept is good...pay people to get stories bumped to the top. Buy your way into the eyes of the public. The concept is as old as time. Grease the wheels and you can get far.
Web 2.0 is based off the concept of community driven content. It's social networking around a service. Twitter, Stumbleupon, Digg all are based off content some 13 year old kid posted, or some random politician posted. We trust these site, we trust that the content is genuine because it's written by me, my buddy, some internet friend in Arkansas or something. But since the fact remains that humans can be swayed with cash pretty easily, what's to stop someone from using the system for their own gain, or political gain. Here's an example (totally random, don't read into it):
Republican posts stories/text on Digg, Twitter, Stumpleupon, wordpress and 20 other places stating that a rival democrat is a drug abuser.
Democrat posts stories/text on Digg, Twitter, Stumpleupon, wordpress and 20 other places stating that a rival republican is a drug abuser.
So at this point, it's in the hands of the public. But remember, at this point all these stories are buried and the half a million viewers won't see it unless it gets voted into the top 10. So chances are no one will read these stories, or at most a few hundred. Now in steps the middle man, who can change the game. A webpage that pays people to give up their votes on pages like Digg for cash. Let's continue.
A group working for the Republican sets up an account on one of these pages and gives them a list of 5-6 web pages they need hits on. The web page passes out these pages via emails to their user base and the users go use up their votes.
It only takes a few hundred to vote a story up to the top. And then everyone will see it. Soon hundreds of thousands click the link and read the article. Articles like this sometimes get linked to, and end up on Google News which has an even larger reader base.
This was obviously an extreme case, but let's look at it realistically. This is already happening with stories, people pay per click to get stories up, but think of the power you can wield politically with the techno crowd which commands a huge following. You can't police the people's votes and money talks. In this scenario, a politician has purchased half a million ears/eyes to their story, and the democrat was never heard.
So ask yourself, since teh internets is such a serious business, who can you trust when you can buy popularity.