Bashing digg – stupidity of Wired

Wired is supposed to be a cool tech reporting site. But unfortunately it is owned by the same company which owns reddit. I have nothing against reddit. It is a good source to find interesting links.

But paying someone to destroy your competitor’s reputation is hardly commendable.

Here is a summary of what Wired’s reporter Annalee Newitz has done,

1. Annalee creates a blog about “photographs of crowds“. It is supposed to be very badly written.
2. Then she submits the blog to Digg.
3. Then she contacts user/submitter and pays $450(!) to buy digg votes.
4. The story gets over 100 diggs. Eventually it is buried.

Consider this. Suppose Pepsi hires a lot of bloggers to write bad articles about Coca cola. Is it possible? Obviously yes, if you pay enough you can find bloggers who do that. But is it ethical? Obviously No. Does that make all bloggers irresponsible? Obviously No.

What is interesting is this. She paid for 430 diggs and got around 100 only! On top of it, the story is buried. Frankly it only shows that Digg works, probably a bit slow.

I guess some people gets irritated when someone else becomes successful