Jason Calacanis dpesn't think much of the "Spike the Vote" effort that's targeting Digg (and maybe other similar services soon):

As you may know, there has been an algorithm change at Digg. Now it takes about 60-100 Diggs to hit the front page depending on your category. Please note that you will only be able to spike a maximum of 50 votes for each story you submit. The spiking is meant to give your story a kick start; it's not meant to spam Digg. If your story has any legs at all, it should have no problem making the front page after 50 spikes. Spike the Vote is offering 250 points for $50 to a limited number of spikers to get the system started. Please respond to this message if interested.

Sometimes I wonder whether any of the people hosting free services have ever heard of "the tragedy of the commons". My first thought on reading about this effort was "well, duhh'.

Let's see: popular usenet groups tend to devolve into crap over time. So do popular mailing lists. Why would anyone think that social media sites are magically immune? There's a reason that I have spam filtering on, and trackbacks off. Open systems that don't have some kind of barrier are going to get gamed. If you don't get that, look up "human nature" until it sinks in.

Technorati Tags: social media, digg