The Dollar Factory

The Internet is not big enough for all the nerds

According to Internet World Stats, well over 1 billion people have online access participating in a multi-billion dollar economy that barely existed just 10 years ago. You would think that there is enough money for everyone to profit. And yet, all I read these days around the blogosphere is nothing but nerds arguing with other nerds for what seems to be about who should have the bigger piece of the pie.

There are plenty of examples of such controversy. Here is a list involving some of the most valuable online properties and their owners.

First, we have Digg’s Kevin Rose get into a fight with some of the top Diggers (read Digg vs. Diggers) who eventually left his website to contribute their talent to other similar startups. The two sides argued about who is the most valuable to Digg with Kevin changing Digg’s algorithms to prevent power Diggers from taking advantage of the system. The battle for the best online news site still amuses the masses with the never ending arguing about Digg vs. Slashdot. There is an endless supply of bloggers arguing to death the pros and cons of each site. Then of course, there is Jason Calacanis who kept going after Digg even trying to pay the top Diggers to move over to his social news network on AOL’s Netscape portal. In the end, some Diggers left for Netscape and Calacanis left Netscape for Sequoia Capital.

In the meantime, TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington seems to have a hard time getting along with people. Most recently he had a bone to pick with Ted Murphy and his Pay Per Post startup. Then some video blogger from 1938media thought it wise to lie naked on his bed and waste a whole 3 minutes calling Arrington an ass; he can sure use some help writing the script for his video blog! Just today, TechCrunch’s readers ripped on Natali Del Conte for writing a story about SimplyHeadlines.com. Apparently, many people thought that this new startup was not worthy of a TechCrunch review. Some people were also pissed off with Arrington because he established CrunchBoard; people argued that he was just copying 37signals who apparently was first to establish a highly targeted job board.

Video bloggers also seem to have a knack for arguing. First, Amanda Congdon couldn’t agree with Andrew Baron about the future of RocketBoom and so she left causing upheaval all around the blogosphere. Then Ze Frank (one of my favorite video bloggers) had a nerd fight with RocketBoom over viewership statistics. Ze also had a brief face off with another video blogger who thought it necessary to rip on Ze because his show remotely had a similar title to his. I won’t name said blogger because I don’t want to give that idiot any more credit.

I won’t even bother to go into the wars among the blogging networks that featuring Weblogs Inc. vs. Engadget vs. the Crunch Network vs. all others that I can’t recall at the moment.

I find this behavior childish. I had hoped that smart and creative people would be able to handle their own celebrity and share in the booming Internet economy. It is unfortunate that they can’t get along. So, I decided to start a new category for this blog to document their bickering.

The new category is Nerds and this is its first post.