Jason Calacanis and company definitely ran into a roadblock with one Digg user, who promptly posted their emails to his blog. Calacanis posted his displeasure with Digg user “Tysonhy” in a response to Tyson’s blog entry…
…regarding Netscape trying to persuade him to be a paid Netscape story submitter. Tyson republished the emails sent by Calacanis and C.K. Sample III, as well as one from the writer of PBS blog Media Shift.
Said Calacanis:
I respect your right to do it for free, and I’m sure you respect people who might want to get paid.
Also, speaking of respect, printing one-to-one emails and contact info is not very cool. My phone and IM have been going crazy all day.
(We have to point out here that his phone numbers are on his web site, while his IM handle is in the profile linked to his name in the comment, all of which are easily found online.)
Tyson has a few reasons for sticking with Digg, which he detailed in his post. He likes Digg’s design, topics, tools, and its community. Twelve grand a year from Netscape isn’t enough to draw his interest away from that, and real life demands have kept him from posting avidly to Digg these days, anyway.
One commenter likened turning down Netscape to a young star hoops player rejecting both the Lakers and a top 10 NCAA program just to keep playing ball in the park.
That presumes Tyson will never get another offer from another user-contributed news site, ever. While republishing the emails was a breach of unwritten Net etiquette, it probably doesn’t mean the entire Internet has written him off, either.
Paying for contributing sounds like an odd idea now, because outside of revenue-sharing as practiced by sites like Newsvine and Gather, it hasn’t reached a point where payment is the rule rather than the exception.
Tomorrow, who knows? Calacanis may be chuckling at everyone from atop a whole pyramid of paid contributors. Plenty of people would love to be paid something for their avocations; Tyson just isn’t one of them.
Discuss this article with your fellow WebPros at WebProWorld.
—
Add to 
Bookmark Murdok: 
David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
