Not only that, but it always makes me mad when people get angry because Microsoft “copies” from Apple or visa versa. If “copying” never went on then would anything ever get better? I doubt it because when someone copies an idea it forces the other company to step up their game to go beyond. You were right on the money Curtiss!

“The masses are asses.”
-Alexander Hamilton

The mob mentality that digg can sometimes display always astounds me. I mean honestly, what is all the fuss about, so what if they took and used Digg’s model and used it for their suggestion board. Props to them for using it as a means to listen to suggestions of their users, and making it social on top of it. There is no logical reason that I can find for anyone to freak out about this.

It is natural for businesses to borrow concepts and ideas of competitors or others in their industry…and build off of that concept, and further innovate it. Look at any industry and you’ll find this to be true. Companies are always taking successful ideas from their competitors (usually so long as they aren’t violating copyright), so that they not only don’t fall behind the popular trend, but also so that they can make further innovations in the industry. I mean if no company were to take/borrow a concept from another in their industry….you’d find that innovation would be stifled, and progression of the industry would virtually come to a halt. It’s completely natural for any business to borrow successful ideas, if they didn’t, they would be completely ignoring what their users/customers (and others in their market/industry) find cool and interesting….and for them to fall behind on a popular idea or trend is to fall out of the competition.

They gave Digg their due credit for the success of the model that their implementing, and it’s not like Yahoo! from what I can tell is using this in any way to compete directly with Digg.

I’m all for people using the Digg model/concept for other purposes, as it shows their ability to keep current with popular models. I’ve never personally been happy with sites that directly try to take digg’s model and compete with them as Netscape has done, particularly because I think that’s nothing more than stealing an idea and trying to be nothing more than number one…because you are part of a bigger corporation that has the money to throw at such projects. Furthermore, I despise Netscape to this day for taking the model and then throwing money at frequent submitters at Digg in order to steal both the users contributions and the users following and bring it over to Netscape for what I see as a clear purpose to triumph over Digg. Also I still think that paying people who link to content isn’t justified in my opinion, as they aren’t content creators and do nothing more than link to popular content (though I do know they have other responsibilities for their position at Netscape)…(ad revenue sharing with youtube users works for google because they are paying content creators and creating a model for the common man to distribute content that is just as popular as that produced by companies like Viacom)…I think it’s a tribute to Netscape’s inability to understand the Digg model. I’d have no problem with someone taking the Digg model and trying to compete with them, so long as they are truly trying to build upon the concept and drive innovation in the industry, and aren’t just looking to jump on the bandwagon.

A lot of the comments diggers have been making are completely off base, and are both irrational and ignorant. All the the hateful arguments I’ve read by diggers are completely invalid and unjustified. People really need to read into things like this more and think about it, rather than just joining in on the mob mentality.