Calacanis and AOL throw money at the problem

Found an interesting article on social bookmarking - especially considering it talks about Jason Calacanis.

Jason is very controversial in the online world, and since he launched the new version of "netscape" homepage that is basically, in my opinion, a let us say "interpretation" of the digg model, he's come under even more fire from some circles. This move I shall mention is going to add to it in the online community; AOL is pinning their hopes on people like Jason to diversify their revenue stream as they leave the ISP business (as you may know).

What I do know is that I just flipped over to netscape and I'm hard pressed to find anything over 100 votes - these things always take time to ramp up, though.

The new plan Jason has cooked up is to pay the top users to come over to netscape $12k a year. I'm of two minds about this - part of me is like, hey, where you can get the money, take it, and why not - and the other side of me is that really my view as a user of netscape is going down even farther as a social site because of the fact they hire guns (which, arguably, is the same as hiring a writer or a journalist - and I read tons of material every day by paid writers, so I admit the irony).

The rub is not that they're getting paid, it's that it sort of against the whole social bookmarking/organic model. Time will tell if the market cares about this. They very well may not.

Of course, my warning for anyone who takes the deal is that when you get paid, someone always wants something in return at some point. Not saying you shouldn't (and if I were in this category, I can't say what I'd do), but as a business owner, I never pay someone and expect nothing back. At that point, it's a gift.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/calacanis_offer.php