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Social Networking - Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Sequoia Invests In Digg Spin Tool Collactive

One of the more exciting startups to have folded in recent memory was Blue Security. The Israel-based, Benchmark-backed company tapped collective outrage about spam to spam the spammers. Problem was the spammers had their backs against the wall and retaliated with a lethal counter-punch that put Blue Security out of business.

Blue Security's founders have returned with a new startup called Collactive that once again seeks to pool the power of the swarms on the Internet. In the case of Collactive, the startup creates swarms to get Digg, Reddit, MySpace, etc. love for its users.

Collactive is based on a quid pro quo system whereby users ID articles or videos they want the group to rate highly. You get you and your friends to rate this highly and I'll do the same in return. Collactive provides the tools to manage the manipulation or ratings on Digg, Redit, etc. Collactive is free for users but it plans to charge businesses and politicians.

Loading a Rate This Barrage

Collactive's spin is that it seeks to "democraticize" the web. But it's clear that Digg isn't pleased: "There's a difference if you are a marketing company and you want to get something manipulated to the top," Digg's CEO Jay Addelson told the WSJ. For sure, Digg is always being jacked around by people who are manipulating it, but Collactive is taking manipulation to another level.

Collactive's Campaign Manager

Collactive is run by co-founders CEO Eran Reshef and President Amir Hirsh, who were behind Blue Security. Sequoia's Haim Sadger led the investment.

UPDATE: Collactive gets in touch to dispute our attribution of a quid pro quo relationship on Collactive, whereby users provide reciprocal Digg baiting. It's an important point and we can appreciate Collactive's position as they do not market on their site this way. However, our interpretation is that users will most certainly use Collactive to facilitate Digg juicing. Manipulating Digg is now an industry with legions of consultants set up to get companies and site traffic from Digg. It would be naive to assume that Collactive will not be used in this way.

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Read - Web Sites' Lists Of 'Most Viewed' Too Easy to Game? (WSJ)
Read - Blue Security Enters Spammers Protection Program (The a:c)