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Two Sides of the Web 2.0 Coin

Posted by Mike Bijon July 26, 2006

A very public argument between Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg, and Jason Calacanis, the founder of Weblogs, Inc. and current trustee of traffic-generation for Netscape/AOL, paints a very clear picture of web 2.0 and why it was built. The latest salvo from Kevin Rose is brief, as he usually is, and titled Calacanis, with a retort by Calacanis titled Kevin Rose cracks (or “how to know when you’ve won the debate”).

On one side of the “primary drivers of web 2.0″ coin stands ideals about the power of information on the internet, and on the flip-side is the ability to profit from a cooler, smarter way of finding or displaying information (and, isn’t that the foundation of search, whether it’s Google or “the people” making the decisions). In this case, both Kevin and Jason have plenty of opportunities to benefit from both sides of this coin. Nonetheless, Jason is a great promoter who has, effectively, copied Digg’s “cooler, smarter” methods and, it seems, isn’t above extending that controversy by offering to pay prolific users of Digg (and other, similar sites) - taking more of a profiteering stance (I do wonder how much this is driven by the demands of AOL … ). Kevin, I think, is proud of the original methods Digg uses to sort and display news info and a fan of letting users run the system - more of an power-to-the-people stance.

Rather than taking a side, I think the most important thing to note from their argument is in its context of competition between high-growth website founders. Consider that while web 1.0 companies didn’t didn’t have public faces and debates like this, many were built and succeeded or failed for very similar reasons to those behind this argument.

As a webophile, just sit back and watch these two - this isn’t the last play in the game. As an entrepreneur, instead of trying to beat a Google or MySpace, consider that as each generation of web sites grows a dedicated audience there are still new opportunities for small, innovative players to create new presentations and interfaces, and only rarely will someone be as bold as Calacanis, to risk losing those hard-earned audiences.