Digg This! – A Solution to the Black Market of Paid Diggs

I’m a capitalist and believe that economies create markets based on demand. With the proliferation of advertisers willing to pay for placement in social bookmarking and networking environments, it is no surprise that a black market has developed to support the demand for paid social media optimization.

New to the space is Subvert and Profit (which even sounds all shady and black market doesn’t it?)

“We are a new kind of black market. We allow advertisers to purchase actions on social networks, and we pay social network users to perform those actions.”

I don’t endorse this method of promotion (note my links are not affiliate referral links) but you have to ask yourself, why does PayPerPost exist? Why hasn’t Digg developed a model that allows content to promote their content? This is the second Digg gaming scheme to catch my attention and I can’t fathom why Digg doesn’t allow folks to sponsor content.

So, a solution for Kevin and the good folks at Digg
How do you support paid content submissions without gaming the system so they get more diggs than appropriate? Can you develop a model that discourages this black market by enabling a solution that is viable for promoters?

I’d like to see an option to sponsor Upcoming listings. A fee that would allow the submitter to highlight their post and keep it on the Upcoming page for longer than the time it takes to be replaced by something else. Why does Digg spam occur? The multitude of content is so great, that very little of is actually seen by the community and given a chance to be valued. More than one blog post has pointed out that the articles that make it to the homepage are result of the popular minority who filter content through their network of friends so that friends rate friends’ submissions and those with the most friends, get the most diggs. To the degree that that is true, I can’t say, but it seems logical and viable so let’s find alternatives that give those that are willing to pay for prominence a chance.