There’s been a lot of controversy about Digg over the past few months, ranging from cries of secret moderation to condemnations about its worthlessness as a news site. Recently, Jason Clarke of DownloadSquad wrote a scathing article about why Digg is doomed.

For the most part, I tend to agree with Jason about how Digg is more an entertainment site rather than a news site:

Although digg claims to be a news aggregation service, in the scheme of things digg articles skew much further towards the Entertainment side of the online content spectrum than they do to the News side. Therefore, a better analogy to illustrate the problem with the digg community would be to liken it to a rock concert that gets out of control where a riot breaks out. The people in the crowd at the concert weren’t looking for a riot when they showed up at the concert, they were there looking to be entertained. The problem is that when a few idiots in the crowd begin taking part in antisocial behavior, the “wisdom of crowds” tells the people in the crowd (particularly those who feel anonymous) that it’s okay to take part in the nonsense.

A few of my friends and I were at a coffee shop discussing the state of online social media. One of us asked the fabled question, “How do you consume Digg?” All of us agreed that it’s basically the technogeek’s equivalent of reading trashy tabloids on the checkout aisle of the supermarket. I don’t go to Digg for serious news, but rather, for a quick peek at some viral videos and articles.

And, I always have a feeling of guilty pleasure.

However, I think it’s sensationalistic to say that Digg is doomed. There’s a place in the online social ecosystem for entertaining quickie types of links. I’m not sure if this is the vision that Kevin Rose had two years ago when he started Digg, but, it’s the reality at the moment.

So, how do you consume the content on Digg?

Read/Write Web writes about a new service called User/Submitter, which pays people to vote for articles on digg. People who want their article or site dugg can pay $20 plus $1 for each desired digg.

At the heart of this is the big gaming elephant in the social news room. Anyone who uses del.icio.us, digg, Wikipedia or any other site that relies on voting has seen the gamers and trolls that lurk behind the curtains. Indeed, we have even seen it here at BuzzShout. In order for such sites to be successful, the barrier to entry for voting should be low enough so that anyone can easily participate. However, this is at odds with the ideal of removing the junk, since it means people and sites like User/Submitter can disrupt the quality chain.

Currently, they are paying $0.50 for every five stories dugg, which is quite low. However, my fear isn’t that people would do this manually. The User/Submitter revenue model may encourage someone to automate the digging process in order to earn the cash. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone has already done this.

Is this a dark portent of the future? Will sites like del.icio.us and digg be controlled by the highest bidder? Even though I still hold to the philosophy that people are generally good, I hope User/Submitter isn’t the start of a new trend.

Calacanis has finally succeeded in getting a response from Kevin Rose, and it’s not a pretty conversation. After offering to pay $1000 a month to top digg users, the blogosphere is alive with banter about the controversial topic of paying social news users.

Calacanis’s stance is that the reaction from the idea of paying top social news contributors is no different than the reaction from paying bloggers via weblogsinc.com. Of course, Kevin and a good slice of the blogosphere is outraged at the mere thought of it.

Personally, I think that paying top digg (or newsvine or reddit or etc.) users a flat fee per month to do what they’ve been doing is a slippery slope. The problem isn’t because they’ll be paid to provide content–that’s okay. It’s the fact that we’ve now singled out a particular group of people as “top” users who deserved to be paid. By doing this, we’ve trumped the whole idea of democratic reviews. Suddenly, people who are not “top” users get the message that they don’t deserve to be paid, and therefore, their contributions are not as valuable.

But, social news sites rely on everyone’s contributions. The more contributions there are, the stronger the content of the site.

The only options are that no one is paid, or everyone is paid.

A compromise between digg and Calacanis’s flat fee idea is something like Squidoo’s profit sharing. Users should get paid with respect to the amount of value they are adding. This could be done through ads, or simply through counting the number of top digged stories they’ve managed to submit.

In the end, I think that there is space for both digg’s model and other social news models, whether they pay out or not. Social new is still young, and there’s a lot of growing that needs to be done.

Yesterday, Digg version 3 launched, and it’s definitely a great redesign. The interface is much tighter, allowing users to more easily navigate between sections and stories. As expected, they also launched a number of new topical areas, in hopes of expanding their reach.

On the interface level, the redesign is a welcome change. The graphics have been slightly updated, and given a softer and more refined look. It’s also much easier to switch between the upcoming stories in the queue, which is really important, since users are the ones that can digg them up to the front page. The tabbed interface for surfing the different topics is also nicely done, allowing users to quickly jump between topic sections. It’s also much easier to jump between the most popular recent stories, and the most popular stories in the past day, week, month, and year.

The big deal is the addition of new content areas for Science, World & Business, Videos, Entertainment, and Gaming. Some of these topics were originally lumped into Technology, but they’ve since been separated. The new topics are currently in beta, and, you can only view them once you’ve logged in.

Whether or not the new topics such as Celebrities will catch on remains to be seen. Currently, there are relatively few stories in these fledgling categories, although, many people are starting to submit new items for them.

Overall, the redesign was a nicely executed, and made the homepage easier to navigate, and easier on the eye. The new categories have great potential, and we’ll have to wait and see if more people besides techno-geeks will start using digg.

Netscape recently launched their new beta portal, which will later replace the front page at Netscape.com. And suprise suprise, the new beta is a digg-clone, allowing users to democratically vote for stories, which are placed on the front page after they attain enough votes. The fact that they are placing this right on the front page is a sign that they’re taking the social news space seriously.

The interface is all-too familiar for us digg-ites out there. Users submit stories which are voted upon by other users. The stories then proceed up (or down) the ranks as users vote for them. The question is, will Netscape be able to overcome digg and the other social news sites out there?

Netscape has the advantage of volume–they have many more pageviews than digg, which could potentially bring in more quality stories and votes. However, Netscape is still hesitating about allowing users to control the content in its entirety. The stories on the absolute top of the stack are chosen by editors, instead of placing trust in the voted content. Netscape probably still has qualms about letting the mobs create the content on their most heavily prized web real estate, so I’m sure we won’t see those editorials go away anytime soon.

There are a few differences in the interface, most notable of which are:

• Photos are pulled in for some of the stories.
• Users are able to tag their submissions.
• Visiting an external link brings up a sidebar navigator frame along with the content.

The tagging function is sorely missed at digg, which I hope will make it into the next version when it comes out later this month. The sidebar navigator is simply annoying. I hate external sidebars, which should never used in my opinion. If I want to visit an external site, let me do it without dragging a klunky framed interface with me! (that goes for you too, Google)

But, other than these two elements, Netscape is pretty much identical to digg. I personally like digg’s design better than Netscape’s, which seems to have been crafted more haphazardly. Perhaps we’ll see another iteration on the design when it comes out of beta.

Amusingly enough, it looks like digg users are gaming Netscape’s system. The top story right now is about how Netscape is copying digg (along with a photo of Kevin Rose):

Looks like the Netscape people will have a lot of these kinds of issues on their plate in the next few days.

In the end, I think Netscape has a chance against the other established sites, simply based on their traffic ranking. And who knows, perhaps Netscape will help foster the idea of user generated democractic stories to the average internet joe, since a good chunk of them have Netscape.com as their homepage.