Memoirs of an English Major

“I think that the online world has actually brought books back. People are reading because they’re reading the damn screen. That’s more reading than people used to do” - Bill Murray So I was reading TechCrunch this week about the possible $300 million dollar deal on Digg. Everyone has pretty much said that it is about time for Digg to sell, mainly because they believe that this is as much as Digg could even hope to get considering it low visitor rate in recent days. I for one actually am against the concept of selling and not because I believe Digg is the best Web 2.0 site, but more so that I one of the few that believe the model should not be to gain as many eyeballs as you can and sell high while you’re able, but to creates something else.

I’m a huge believer in paradigm shifts. I believe pretty much any change that doesn’t harm or kill any of the species is a positive one, even if I don’t agree with it. Most of this change has been in the realm of how we view information. Digg was one said site that showed the concept of the masses, showing that people could choose what they felt was news worthy and spread it to all the four corners of the globe. It was one of the few sites that showed this in a very clean and glorious manner.

I was hoping it would never sell just to show that one site could actually prove that it could turn a profit and show all that the model can be changed. But I’m not that naive to think this. I know the game on the net. Though Digg probably sell out, it did bring into the net the concept of social linking and social news. It also showed what can happen with a wide scope site.

Much like a poorly executed paper, a site with a wide scope is terrible. It doesn’t go in depth into any of its subject matters and because of this, it suffers tremendously. The Digg site became much like a wide scope paper, not too specific and filled with poor content. Perhaps the lesson that can be learned from Digg is that it is not the masses who matter, but more so the niche. Perhaps it is best to keep to a scope, no matter how untested it is and to go with it, just to see where it goes. The masses will come when they are ready and trust me, it may take awhile. Look at where mp3 players were about ten years ago and look how long it took for the masses to get into that? It just takes time for people to accept change, but they do, once it becomes so large that they can’t ignore it. It just takes a little time and whole lot of patience.

Well those are my thoughts on this as foreign as they are in this stream of Web 2.0 content. What do you believe will be the next paradigm shift?