By John S. AlwaysOn: The Insider's Network
Why would the founders of Digg, the fast-growing social news site that says it gets more than 20 million unique monthly visitors, keep trying to sell it?
The question could have two answers, both of which may be true: either Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson want to get rich and/or the traffic on the site they run isn't quite what it seems.
The second possibility is more compelling now that longtime Digg users have revolted because of changes the site recently made to its algorithm. Those changes will dilute the power of prolific posters. While the disgruntled Digg veterans now say they're appeased after an online heart-to-heart with Digg's founders, the truce won't change this simple fact: if a sale goes through, Adelson and Rose are about to get rich, thanks in part to their own vision and hard work but also to long hours of effort from people who won't get a dime from any acquisition. Therein lies the great irony of social networking startups: for all the socialist-like talk of building a community, every successful site will eventually be divided into its haves (i.e,, people who will profit from its success) and its have-nots (those who won't.) Digg today is not what it once was.
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