The Drill Down 072 – Populism vs. Elitism in Social Networks (featuring ncomment)

Posted on January 19, 2009, 5:30 am, by andy, under Show Notes, The Drill Down.

This week The Drill Down crew is honored to have as our guest Lee Garnett, creator of ncomment, a webcomic focusing primarily on social networks such as Digg, Reddit, Twitter, and YouTube. We discuss the dynamics of populism versus elitism on social networks such as Digg and why users on these networks prefer a meritocracy over a true democracy. Later, we discuss the crash of flight 1549 (and how citizen journalism was first on the scene), Steve Jobs’ departure from Apple (and their future), and how your Google search may (or may not) be killing the planet!

The Drill Down 072 [ 0:01 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (349)

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Show links

73.4 Percent of All Wikipedia Edits Are Made By Roughly 1,400 People
“There’s a plane in the Hudson. I’m on the ferry going to pick…”
U.S. Airways Crash Rescue Picture: Citizen Journalism, Twitter At Work
Steve Jobs is taking a leave of absence from Apple due to health reasons
Steve Jobs Probably Won’t Come Back to Apple
Revealed: the environmental impact of Google searches
Revealed: How The Times Got Confused About Google and The Tea Kettle
Google Giveth, and Taketh Away: Google Video, Notebook, Catalog Search, Jaiku, and Dodgeball to Shut Down
Delete 10 Facebook friends, get a free Whopper
Facebook Sacrifices Burger King ‘Whopper’ App
President Obama’s official portrait: the first ever taken with a digital camera
Who is Carol Bartz? Yahoo’s New Sheriff
DRM-free iTunes music embedded with owner’s email address

Save this link! Watch the Inaguration of President Barack Obama here on January 20th, and live chat with other The Drill Down listeners.

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  • http://reechard.vox.com Richard Walker

    I don’t listen very often, folks, and while I’m glad the audio fidelity has improved, I wonder if you could focus on limiting the silliness.

    GOOG is a FOR PROFIT PUBLIC COMPANY, so I don’t wonder what it’s responsibility is toward “the investors who gave them money” to purchase start-ups. Instead, I imagine that these measures are virtually mandated by the rules of the game, i.e. TO RETURN PROFIT TO INVESTORS and avoid continually shedding cash in a “recession” economy.

  • http://www.staretube.com atomicpoet

    I have to disagree with you about the matter of meritocracy vs. populism.

    During the past few weeks my submissions have been getting exponentially more diggs. Has the quality of my submissions been getting better? No. I’ve been making more friends, talking to more people, been willing to make more time to push other stories. In short, I’ve been more social.

    This flies in the face of “merit”. It has nothing to do with how great my submissions are — just that I’m making more effort to get people to see them.

    As well, I do much better on Reddit than Digg. And you know what? I’m not social there at all. All I do is give something a nice title. Reddit has far more of a meritocracy than Digg.

    Finally — and I’m going to make a personal plug here — for the past month and a half, I’ve been creating a site based on stuff that flies below the radar of social media. It’s all good stuff. I know that because once my posts hit social media, they often become popular. Am I doing something magical to make the content better (besides providing a little research and content)? No! All I’m doing is giving a damn about stuff that no one else bothered to give a damn about originally — and convincing people to give it a second chance.

    Sorry for the long rant, but I think you should have a different perspective.

  • http://twitter.com/mrrose andy

    I have to agree partially with atomicpoet.

    While your discussion was very well informed it missed a few obvious points.

    1. What atomicpoet suggested. That popularity on sites like Digg is not just informed on the “quality” of submissions. not at all.

    2. You argued that the rise to popularity is justified by the hard work diggers put in. I agree, they have indeed worked harder to make it from the bottom where we all start, to get to the top. However, you failed to give enough weight to the problematic issues of the self perpetuating nature of power. That is, once you have “power” or popularity, then the reason you stay on top is not so directly linked to quality or “hard work”

    good discussion, but quite a lot of patting yourselfs on the back…

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