Ian On The Red Dot

Apparently, there is a storm over at Digg regarding its top member. ReadWriteWeb has an excellent post covering the event. More importantly, the post brings up a lot of good points about the social media scene, its nature, the somewhat inevitability of the kind of people it will attract and the dynamics of community on a ostensibly democratic site.

A lot of the stuff said is what I have always felt about social media. I just didn’t say it as eloquently as Marshall Kirkpatrick over at ReadWriteWeb. I’m going to highlight some parts which I find useful and end with a comment at the end about what social media online reveals about democracy.

There are a number of criticisms that Digg users levy against Andrew Sorcini. The primary one, which Vogt’s cartoon remix refers to, is that MrBabyMan submits duplicate stories that other Diggers have submitted, knowing that his superior prowess will eliminate any chance that the original submission will hit the front page.

The next criticism is that MrBabyMan uses an unfairly large network of friends and spam-like “shouts” to garner favors and give his submissions an artificial momentum that they don’t warrant on merit alone.

The dominant one is this. Andrew Sorcini’s MrBabyMan persona is sitting at the top of a small network of loyal friends, made up of people like SEO marketers, PR agents turned would-be social media experts and other unsavory folk. That circle is further surrounded by an even larger network of millions of Digg users who try to have fun on the site but also wish they could find success there. Many of them no doubt with they too could find a way to make a living in the snake-oil filled circus that is “new media marketing,” as many of the top Digg users have done.

MrBabyMan says he has added friends to help promote stories because that’s how the rules work, if he didn’t need to do that he wouldn’t.

“All I ever wanted,” he said, “was just for the stories to live or die on their own merits. If everyone was on a level playing field I would love that - because I still have the skills to find the great stories…I’m not complaining about the algorithm, but I don’t want to be vilified for working within the parameters of it.“

While mid-tier Diggers are far more likely to be engaging in pure pay-for-play, other people at various points in the hierarchy are building careers as “new media experts.” The experience that lands them the consulting contracts they live on? A demonstrated history of success in promoting stories on sites like Digg.

but to claim that top Digg users invest as much time and energy into the site as they do entirely “for the love of it” and “to share good stories with people” - with no economic incentive, short or long term, is a cynical joke.

He’s human, too, so sometimes he fudges a little. “The only promotion I do,” he said, “is Digging the stories my friends submit and keeping the chain of Digging going. That’s the same thing everyone does and that’s the system Digg has set up.”

We like to think that democracy is a system where every individual’s vote counts. I believe it is. But it isn’t just a system where everyone who has an idea or plan or opinion just puts it out there for everyone else to hear and then hopes everyone supports and vote for it. There is work that needs to be done behind the scenes. Part of the work behind the scenes is to build up a network of friends who are more likely to support you because of the nature of an existing friendship. We can feel that it is unfair. We can feel that it goes against the essence of fairplay that a group can dictate proceedings. While some members of the group will have their own selfish nefarious agenda of personal aggrandizement, I believe such groups are necessary because it allows people to find support for their ideas, plans or opinions. Sometimes, these people have terrible ideas, plans, opinions and the sadly, they gain momentum in the wider community because of the work and support of the inner-circle/elite/core group of whatever you want to call it.

The thing now is not to criticize these groups of power-brokers within a community. The question is this - if you feel you have an idea, or plan, or opinion, or whatever worth advancing, do you have the skills to bring it to the rest of the people. A core skill in a democracy is the ability to network.

The only criticism that can possibly be levied against such systems is when the existing power structure prevents a new group with better ideas, plans, opinions from advancing their cause.

Is that the case in online social media sites?