Can You "Digg" It?
Who is "the most famous man on the internet?" According to Inc. magazine, it's Kevin Rose, who is the founder of "Digg." You don't know what Digg is? Well, even after looking at it, and reading the article about Rose in Inc., I'm still not sure myself. Maybe that's because I'm not in my 20s.
Inc. magazine calls Digg a "news/technology/nonsense" site. It also says that Digg is "sometimes described as an online newspaper or a social search engine, but it feels more like a seedy bar that happens to serve news." From my visit to the site, that pretty well describes it.
Digg has 30 million visitors a month, and seems to be filled with blogs about just about anything you might be interested in. The article says that Kevin has become somewhat of a "rock star," with people mobbing him wherever he goes. In addition to Digg, Rose has a television network (Revision 3) and a communications platform (Pownce).
Digg seems to be a site for anyone to post a link to the Digg website. Digg's readers vote for the links that they like best, and it's a very big deal to make Digg's front page.
So why write this article about Kevin Rose? Kevin's part of a new generation, one that is changing the world like no other generation ever. And it's time that YOU get with it too. For those of you who have read my articles over the years, you know that I love Inc. magazine. Recent issues have featured many articles on "young" entrepreneurs. This generation is tired of doing business the way baby boomers are doing it. The are re-defining everything about business.
I'm not just talking about business owners - the "worker bees" are tired of "business as usual" too. My friend, Shirley Garrett, brought me an article that was titled, "The Death Of Office Politics." The article claims that this new generation (Generation X, Generation "Why" - or whatever you want to call them) doesn't want - or need - to please Boomers in order to fulfill their goals.
Here's another interesting statement from the "Office Politics" article - "Many twenty - and thirtysomethings consider teamwork a fiction perpetrated by the old to get them to do someone else's work." A side-article in Inc. talks about baby boomers missing out on getting trophies when they played sports when we were young. To make up for this, they made sure that their kids got a trophy for just showing up. The result? These kids don't need constant praise - they see this as another meaningless trophy.
What do you need to learn from this? If you're 40+, you need to adjust to the new business world if you hire - or sell to - those that are younger than 40. David Sze, a Digg investor and board member, says that "Rose's real breakthrough, 'the magic of Digg,' was not his idea of having regular people vote on the news but the fact that he actually got them to do it." There lies the real challenge that you face - How do you get your young Team Members and Customers to "Digg it!?"
