Digg has sent tidal waves of traffic to some of the blogs in Know More Media’s network, including mine, and had not really focused on Digg till recently - Seth Godin has been posting a lot about Digg lately.  Question is: what should Digg do next?

"Get permission.

Get permission to fead the League tidbits about the future. The reason they are Diggers is that they like being first, they like discovering cool stuff and then sharing it. So organize that process and monetize it."

I think that’s a good idea - Digg needs some organizing process similar to the Open Directory - DMOZ where there is ownership/editors for each Directory in DMOZ).  I don’t know how that would work, exactly, but I think this is what I envision when I read Seth’s latest post about Digg.

"2. The other alternative could happen tomorrow. Build a Squidoo lens or a blog for Legion members. Figure out how to assemble a thousand or even 200 like-minded diggers. Have them sign up and give you their email address. Use the RSS feed of the lens to keep your members up to date. Now, instead of finding readers for your "ads", you find ads for your readers. Every day or two, your post goes out to your members. Every day or two, you make a hundred or a thousand or ten thousand dollars from someone who had a story worthy of being distributed."

I guess what’s being described here is making Digg more of a service bureau that’s attractive for companies that want their news or products to be advertised.  The Service Bureau would be Digg - in the middle - getting the two hundred bloggers on one side and the advertiser on the other.

The first method Seth came up with depends on an editor to decide what to feed Digger’s who have signed up to receive news.

"Then, go to the teeming masses of marketers out there and invite them to nominate their new ideas, their new posts, their new sites to your editor. The editor picks the ones that are good enough, that make the cut. Figure three or ten or a hundred a day, depending on the demand. Once demand goes up, charge $20 just to submit one, so the editor can hire a squadron of assistants.

Alert the marketers that have something worth of distribution. Let the others down easy. Now, let the ones that qualify bid against each other. High bidder gets first billing, top five bidders make the list.

Alert the 500 or the 5,000 or the 50,000 Diggers that signed up. They see a list of things that might be tomorrow’s big news. They digg the ones they love. Marketers save millions and months. Digg makes a fair profit and becomes a key power broker in the launch of the new. Diggers who choose to get to see a commercial glimpse of tomorrow (the same way reporters choose to look at press releases from the right media outlets)."

I don’t know - maybe this is where Digg is going.  I know at KMM we’re now putting a Digg This button on the bottom of all our posts.   

I guess Seth’s post is about getting permission to feed Digg new information; maybe both models can exist at the same time (what Digg is now, and a new version of Digg - say Premium Digg).