codyg1985’s Think Tank

Recently, Netscape decided to launch a competing website aimed squarely at Digg, one of many “social bookmarking” websites that rely solely on user-submitted items to deliver content. This blog post by ZDNet takes a look into just how much each user of these social networking sites is worth.

While traffic and usage numbers have grown at Web 2.0 properties, the very low ratio of contributing users to non-contributing users has not evolved.

One trend that is unmistakeable, especially at Digg where popularity of an item determines its exposure, is that there are about ten users that have the vast majority of front-page items. Those users are a part of a group of users that vote each other’s items up the queue of “upcoming stories.” If a user isn’t part of such a group, then that user’s item will remain in the queue.

Most of the users at Digg view the front page stories and rarely have a look at the upcoming stories. As a result, stories already on the front page will gain in popularity while stories sitting in the queue will remain in the queue. There is no incentive for users to sift through queued stories; it doesn’t contribute to the user’s overall ranking. It isn’t so much that there is a low ratio of contributing users, but that those that are willing to contribute can’t make a dent in the fabric because their items aren’t being promoted to the front page due to a lack of exposure.

Next, there is the issue of the cost incurred from mantaining a growing infrastructure to keep the websites running:

Additionally, the Web 2.0 leaders in traffic and usage are incurring greater infrastructure costs to support the growing non-paying users, and under-monetized usage.

The success of these website depend on the service they provide being free.  However, the very fact that these services are free attract any breed of user, including teenagers with a limited ability to rationalize and make a point.  Creating a premium service may weed out users that are most likely to cause trouble, but on the other hand, it would alienate the greatest majority that are casual users of these websites.  Most importantly, creating a premium service or a totally pay-as-you-go website would certainly reduce the user base.  Again, the appeal of these websites is that they are free to use.