Chief Innovation Officer: Digg Edition
Digg is an amazing place for traffic generation.”Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson’s Digg.com is among the top 1000 sites on the web — in any category — according to Amazon’s Alexa metrics. Its unique approach to community driven news and dedication to tech trends and product announcements attracts IT professionals, developers, professional geeks and other tech leaders. Digg’s enormous ability to drive channel traffic to other websites has become so well-known that when other sites experience an exceptional surge in daily traffic, the first question they ask is, “Who Dugg us?” ” -via FMPub
The Hot Sheet for Digg
Site Name: Digg.com
CEO: Kevin Rose
What’s Right- The sites traffic is out the roof. The readership base is 94% women. And the 6% is probably geekier than the average American.
What’s Wrong- The site is filled with flamers. Digg partially has a bad reputation for negativity and elitism. It’s been bashed for spamage. I see a clear solution to all these problems in my innovation. Money. Does Digg make 10k a month? They should be. Read below to find out how.
Innovate Now or Die:
Digg isn’t leveraging its traffic, its user base to do anything worthwhile. They need to invoke the power of wisdom to cash in, and make this a much bigger ticket item to sell. If that’s Kevin Rose’s dream.First off make spam obsolete.
1) Paid Submission Program
You pay a monthly amount and you can submit 5 stories a day, and have 5 power credits. 5 Power Credits give your story a “5+ digg” headstart.
2) Digg Products
This is a no brainer. Digg needs a daily digg product. Someone pick up the phone and call Woot already. The only reason Kevin Rose hasn’t done this is because he’s been staring at his traffic logs again. Get up pick up the phone get her done.
3) Digg Profiles
Paid Members of Digg get randomized front page profiles complete with pictures and a link to their blog. And a recent grab of their rss feed. Also Digg should charge for front page listings utilizing the blocks of time method. Rent the front page of digg for an hour a day. A week, a month. It’s a rotating scale weighted. So your company could create a profile and rent front page space. You would have different account levels. One for personal, one for professional, and another for corporate. It’s a no brainer. If Kevin doesn’t do it He doesn’t really care about money that much.
4) See innovation project with Federated Media.
Kevin,
If John Battele doesn’t hit this idea up. Flash me an email. I may be busy but I’m not that busy that I couldn’t help you bang out an initial “Weekend of Technology”
Competition for Innovation Concepts: At this point no one. But reddit should implement a similar concept. As should Memeorandum. It’s the smart thing to do. As long as the innovation breeds profits who cares if its a simple innovation.
Innovation Richter: 6 out of 10
What they need to do is take the path of metafilter and charge 5-10 bucks to get a membership to submit and comment
Jesse said this on April 27, 2006 8:39 am
I like that thought Jesse. I don’t think that the immature audience that holds the traffic there will be willing to pay that to trash submitters.
Dennis Bullock said this on April 27, 2006 8:48 am
uh, I’m sure that digg makes a lot more than 10k per month on their google ads alone. The servers to handle the traffic digg gets would cost just about 10k/month. I used to be the managing editor for a popular website with an Alexa rank of about 5000 (no where near as popular as digg.com) and we consistently made between 12-15k/month off ad revenue alone, not including consulting fees. My point is that your figure, based on digg’s popularity – considering the Alexa rank of 345 – probably makes four if not five times that in a month, easy.
nhansen said this on April 27, 2006 8:51 am
I meant 10k more a month minimum.
David said this on April 27, 2006 8:55 am
So Kevin don’t want to make it a commercial venture and destroy the site with advertising? Good for him.
steve said this on April 27, 2006 8:56 am
sorry, wish I could edit comments…but my point was that your figure of 10k is way low.
nhansen said this on April 27, 2006 8:57 am
I’m in aggreement. I just tossed a number out there.
David said this on April 27, 2006 8:58 am
So Kevin don’t want to make it a commercial venture and destroy the site with advertising? Good for him.
Did you read the post? David’s not suggesting advertsing more. He’s suggesting charging users to use the site either for submissions or for commenting or for extras. There are so many users that charging 5 bucks to sign up would bring in massive profit
Jesse said this on April 27, 2006 9:11 am
No one would pay a nickle.
Loren Feldman said this on April 27, 2006 9:06 pm