A seemingly angry post on Digg by Pownce developer Leah Culver about a duplicate feature in Digg’s new profiles, and a peek at that feature, made us wonder about the fuss.
“Since I originally came up with the Pownce gender list, I’m somewhat miffed that Digg copied Pownce,” reads the post at Digg. It showed Culver as the poster, and linked to an image in her Flickr profile.
The image has been deleted since the original post, which leads us to think Culver experienced a little remorse about submitting it to Digg in the first place. Digg’s Kevin Rose also runs Pownce where he presumably worked with Culver at some point during its development.
Culver’s stated problem about the gender list refers to a simple dropdown list of added choices one can make for a profile, on either Pownce or Digg. Pownce is closed to outsiders who want to sign up, unless they have an invitation to join.
Fortunately, Beth Granter grabbed a screenshot of the Pownce gender list in July, shown here:
Digg’s gender list in its recently updated Profiles section contains similar entries, viewable under one’s About Me link in Settings. Many of the entries match Pownce’s but Digg left out ‘Chicky-poo’ in favor of ‘grrrl’.
It’s a strange thing to get upset about, especially when Culver likely can contact Rose easily and talk about it. A simple dropdown list like this one doesn’t contain any trademarks or copyrighted terms that should send anyone screaming for the lawyers or anything like that.
Sure is a funny old Internet sometimes, isn’t it?
