OPEN

…Digg, as it is, is useless to me, and to most of the rest of the
universe. I don’t care if there’s a video on YouTube about an 87 year old dude
having a sex change…. It’s
not that Digg inherently sucks. In fact, I think attention markets are going to
be a revolutionary, radical innovation. But, as in many 2.0 models, the content
is like the community. Digg’s community of pimply teenagers can give me neither
relevance nor depth… Now,
the WSJ’s, WaPo’s, NYT’s, Economist’s audiences could – but they haven’t been
given the tools to connect and create. [My emphasis.]

Mr Haque lays the blame for tools like Digg not spreading faster clearly at the door of VCs who he says are completely at sea when it comes to investing in media – their comfort zone is all about enterprise technologies.

It’s an interesting point. I certainly agree that the Digg model is powerful and will be even more powerful when it is linked to mainstream news / content. Digg sometimes seems more fascinating for what it represents than some of the content it throws up, for sure. Memeorandum gives a more consistently useful digest for me, but I still like Digg.

He’s a little harsh on the Digg content even if it is understandable for the sake of colourful rhetoric: the front page right now features a lot of tech stories (PS3 launch, Myspace backlash, Windows vs. Apple) but no teen gross out stories, disappointingly.

I find it hard to imagine that there aren’t VCs even now poised to invest in attention market services like this, but the proof of Mr Haque’s argument is, I guess, the lack of a Digg for the rest of us.

technorati tags: Digg, Memeorandum, News, Aggregator,

The fact that the Digg model has not spread to other communities faster is an indictment of the vision of venture capitalists, according to Umair Haque of Bubblegeneration.