Heavier editorial involvement seems to be the way to go.

Still, you are always going to have people doing this kind of activity in the marketplace. People act out of motivations and financial motivations are some of the most frequent.

I’m not going to stand on the street corner and yell “I love Starbucks!”. If I did, people would make a quick assumption that I am either paid to do it or crazy and discount whatever else I may say when they talk to me. I expect the same kind of responses to evolve in online systems where it becomes easier to “tune out” the editorial votes of a particular shill.

Brian, I agree with you. I do think editorial will come ’round again in some kind of hybrid of social and editorial format.

Yes. I expect editorial to come back in a huge way. The Boing Boing or Lifehacker model is way more valuable and trustworthy when compared to Digg.

One of the hip clothing stores would pay teens to wear their expensive jackets and boots while they hung out and walked the mall. Some of the insiders knew this was happening, but most of the regular shoppers didn’t. They’d prance around acting cool and talking about how great each other looked.

It seemed to work. Lots of unpopular kids spent a fortune on clothes in that place trying to buy social status.

Crowdsourcing social media, circa 1990

One has to wonder where the line is… Is it really worth it to corrupt these organizations? In my mind, if I can’t win fairly, then so be it. Cheating is not cool. Unfortunately, “paid for” marketing ethos would tell you differently.

It is unfortunate, though, since Digg could be very useful even if used by diggers to make a profit. This kind of “black social marketing” approach could work well if it weren’t for those who will inevitably spam Digg and choke it with massive amounts of refuse. The only way a social site could avoid this is to police its people and its content to such a degree that true freedom of expression would be lost.