I saw a blog post that theorizes how much money digg.com makes. If you've been living under a rock, digg is a "social news and bookmarking site" that aggregates stuff and ranks it according to how crowd wisdom thinks it's important.
When it comes down to it, the site doesn't do anything all that remarkable, as hundreds of sites did a lot of the same things before. But it was successful in part because founder Kevin Rose was able to use his celebrity, and in part because it was one of the better implementations of the various features.
Kevin was a lowly segment producer on TechTV's "The Screen Savers" back in the day. He was also a natural on camera. When the horrible G4 (Comcast) network bought TechTV, he became even more popular. I think he clearly had a bright future in television. But he didn't like he was doing, so he had the courage to go out and do his thing. One good idea is all it took, and unless he really screws up, he's going to be well off for a very long time. That's a great story. He stuck it to The Man, and eclipsed what The Man had him doing.
This makes you wonder... what's next? Clearly these kinds of opportunities on the Web keep cropping up, but it's so hard to think of the next big idea. I want that kind of self-made success, I just don't have the ideas flowing.
However, there are some things that are clear to me. The first I've known for a long time: The Internet levels the playing field. for as much as we might complain that there's more crap than ever, the brief history has shown us again and again that money and big corporations don't get you to success any faster than some hack like me working at home. That's the single most exciting thing about the Web, and it has been that way for the last decade. It's how Google, eBay and Amazon were born.
The second moment of clarity is more relevant to me as a media guy, and it became reinforced in my head when I read some comments for a recent podcast. It's simple: People want content on their terms, and they want it specific to their needs. That means niche content, in whatever format is best for them. It's not always clear on how to translate that to revenue, but that's the side of the publisher-consumer transaction that us Web jockeys have had to figure out for years. We'll figure this out too.
Despite an aging site that isn't well designed, CoasterBuzz had done a pretty good job at some of that from the beginning. That's why I mentioned that user-submitted content was hardly a new concept that came along with digg. I don't think there is much more revenue to be squeezed out of the coaster enthusiast scene, but I still can't help but wonder what a future version of the site might bring. It's fun to think about.
I'm a media guy. I do HD video now too. I have to figure out how all of the interests in my life can combine with experience to define something really cool to do with my life.