Alexander Galloway points out in his book Protocol, that the new power is now in the design and the algorhythms of the social software we are using, as these determines the ground rules of our interaction. A recent story about Digg, shows a conflict about the influence of top users, who sometimes collude, and a new selection algorhythm that is supposed to diminish this influence.
The same story reports that Digg also censors stories from competing services:
“here we see that reddit stories get banned (buried) from the home page of digg on a regular basis. We’ve had the same thing happen with Netscape stories. It’s becoming clear to everyone that digg is censoring competing services and criticisms of digg from hitting the home page and hidding behind the “bury” feature.”
In the same entry, author James Calacanis concludes about the conflict between Digg and its top users and what this says about power in social media:
“digg wants to break the 1% who are controlling the site.
These people earned their spots as top users, and it’s really unfair for them to pay the price for putting in countless hours to get to the top of the list. This shows yet another Achilles heal to social media as a business: you’re really not in control. Of course, control in business is really an illusion in my mind unless you own some distribution channel, spectrum, or monopoly. So, perhaps it’s better to say that in social media you are really, really, *really* not in control. You are the host of the party, but if the party people leave so might the party.”
