Social News Websites and Engagism

I've noted in recent weeks that a number of social news websites (digg.com, netscape, etc.) are among the fastest growing on the internet. Now there are actual real live jobs being created as a result of this growth, and I don't just mean in the venture capital world. Some sites are now paying active contributors for surfing the internet and "digging up" entertaining and/or thought provoking stories and information. The jobs have fuzzy job descriptions (some call them "social navigators" or "cool hunters") and the work sounds, on the surface, pretty easy. Search around the internet, find stories that other people will find interesting, post them on one of the social newsites. What's key, though, is beyond having the ability to navigate the web pretty easily, these newest members of the workforce must have the ability to know, intuitively, what stories other people will find interesting. In other words, they must have a sense of what is engaging. As Jason Calacanis at Netscape puts it "This is a new field, in some ways, a new talent pool."

Now that this kind of work is becoming mainstream, people are specializing in certain areas of cool hunting. They may be known as a specialist in food stories, or stories about technology. While this approach is not without controversy (social news site purists believe it's wrong to pay people for this kind of work), what this development really demonstrates to me is that there's a whole new world out there in terms of the kinds of jobs that engagism will create -- and the types of skills needed for those jobs.

To read the article go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/25/AR2006082501308.html