Would You Like Fries With That?

Jason Calacanis is a man of his word.  He went out and raided the competition in order to weaken them. His Post today is titled: The first 10 Navigators: We've hired three of the top 12 DIGG users, the #1 user from Newsvine, the #1 user from Reddit, and a bunch of Weblogs, Inc. folks. - The Jason Calacanis Weblog.

The title is the post. The title is too long.  The title is grandstanding.  It's unseemly.

But the fun doesn't stop there.  He says in the post:

Here are the basic details, we hired:

1. Three of the top 12 DIGG users
2. The #1 user on Newsvine
3. The #1 user on Reddit
4. We hired a bunch of folks from Weblogs, Inc. (since we know and love them :-)

Note that the people he "hired" for $12,000 a year have no names.  He gave links to two of them, but didn't give life to them as people.

They are not people to Jason, despite his populist banter, it is increasingly apparent that they are assets that he is acquiring for next to nothing and is now rubbing this in the faces of the other services.  He is saying "I can steal your business model."   "I can undermine your community."

Newsvine's Corey Spring defends his newfound wealth to his community by noting that he was a person, capable of making a decision, and this is a decision that can at least pay part of his rent while he finishes college.  And Corey does have the right to make decisions that work best for him.

But I will tell you that many sites out there pay a lot more than $1000 a month for people who will provide 30% or more of their content.

Jason says:

It is important to note that this is all an experiment. No one knows for sure if this model of "paying people for work" us gonna work. I mean, it's crazy to think that people could be paid to do a job and do it with integrity--that's just crazy talk. :-)

But, there is a strong disconnect between the value Jason gets (stealing assets from competition, proven content providers, and a steady stream of press) and the $5.75 an hour equivalent he's paying for that content.  It won't take people long to realize that they are giving Jason more value for his money - and they are there only for the money.

Corey says:

So call me what you wish, evil, a good guy, a sellout, a lucky son of a @!$%#, whatever. I could make the argument that Jason Calacanis is fond of making, that their are paid firefighters and there are also volunteers. It's a good argument. I could also make the argument that it is Newsvine's philosophy that if you produce good work, you should be compensated for it - that's why we have the revenue sharing program. It's easy to complain and criticize (hey I do it all the time) but who actually ever does something about it? This is not only a chance to lend my help to a website that I think could use improving, and this is also a good deal for me - I now have a funding source for my continued education.

So, Jason, understand that Corey is (appropriately) treating Netscape like burger flipping.  He's working his way through college and will take off his grease stained cap as soon as it suits him.  Netscape's subminimum wage compensation package isn't likely to be compelling for long. 

Photo: Lysandra Nelson

Technorati Tags: McDonalds, Netscape, Exploitation, Raiding, community_indicators

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Comments

[Jay Fienberg]

Some of this seems like a natural consequence of the current generation of social sites, which talk the talk of online community ideals but walk the walk of dot com profit ideals.

Regardless, people will make community. And, trying to pay people to make community is (as in this case) probably worth more as a way of generating PR/news than as a way of generating good community activity.

What's interesting, still, is the degree to which individuals can take some of the value they put into one community and--it being attached more to themselves than to the community, take it with them elsewhere.

Ultimately, IMO, we need to somewhat frown upon all sites that effectively try to own your activity--by literally owning the community. Some of that is OK--like, Disney can own an online Disney community, fine. But, the standard for community should be more like community, made up of many smaller, privately owned "properties" and some collectively / publicly owned ones, etc.

Jason Calacanis's Netscape reveals a fundamental flaw (from the point of view of "the user") in the ownership of the "communities" he is competing with. Netscape has these same flaws, and is simply being differently commerical in how it capitalizes on the sharecropper position of its users.