Web 2.0 idols meet with… a camera

Where Digg CEO Jay Adelson and Digg Founder Kevin Rose answered some questions, but not others

Jay and Kevin came from backstage and took an hour or so to address several questions from Digg users in a Ustream TV live broadcast on Feb 25/08. I watched most of the Ustream broadcast and I was also part of a live chat group (about 100 or so people at its peak, but I don’t have an exact number) during the broadcast.

The guys deserve credit for setting up a public forum (of sorts) to discuss questions about Digg, including some of the biggest and toughest ones out there. However, a number of people will probably be dissatisfied with the answers that were given, including at least one flat-out refusal to address one of the questions (i.e. is Digg going to be sold?)

Ultimately, these two guys and their team control the Digg interface and functionality and somehow one or more of them own it (Kevin Rose is typically identified as the founder/owner of Digg; not sure what Jay’s ownership role is) and they have some form of funding.

In other words, they can do pretty much anything that they want with Digg, notwithstanding possible backlash from members of the Digg user community. That’s a fact.

My take on the broadcast is that the Digg team are trying to make the site better and more useful. They prefer Digg to be a hands-off, self-moderated site and their main concerns are spamming and other TOS violations. If I were in their shoes, I would imagine that wading into community moderation or control would probably be a heck of a lot more work than anyone would really want to take on. Maybe that’s why they’ve not taken that path, plus it seems to be consistent with the site’s philosophy.

I disagree with their Bury position - it needs to be a transparent process, IMHO, and people should be able to see who is burying their stories. Let the “crowd” decide how to deal with the info about who buried what and it will sort itself out.

As far as the Town Hall itself, it’s a decent start to more and better communication. The in-person Town Hall concept, however, will be a bigger test. Will the guys be willing to make it a more open forum, or will it be more controlled like the Ustream broadcast?

A live, in person Town Hall format should not be run the same as the Ustream broadcast, in my opinion. They need to be able to take spontaneous questions “from the floor” for it to be effective. I’ll be interested to see if that happens. Maybe they won’t be comfortable doing that, especially when they know they’ll really be under the microscope at that time. I’d feel pretty uncomfortable about it as well. However, pressing the flesh and getting away from scripts would certainly help distinguish them as new age business leaders, wouldn’t you say? It would also allow them to really show that they are listening.

A number of people have written some reviews and commentary on the Town Halls, which I’ve included below. They are much more detailed than my post, so I recommend that you check them out.

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