Professional Social Bookmarkers

Jason Calacanis stirred the blogosphere again a couple of days ago when he posted an ad about hiring top users of social bookmarking sites such as Newsvine, Delicious, Digg, Flickr, MySpace, and Reddit.

The job? Doing what they’ve always been doing on their spare time — tagging and submitting stories. The perks? A nifty $1,000PHP 58,686INR 84,750EUR 952CNY 7,278 monthly payout for doing the same with Netscape (a base of 150 submissions per month).

I’d say good for him and nice one for the top bookmarkers who sign up with him. Forums looking for new members have been paying people to post, why not tag?

If you’re having fun doing these things for nothing, I guess you’d be more motivated it there was money involved. Just look at the bloggers around you — more often than not you’ll see them very active on blogs that are raking in the big bucks. The ones that were borne out of pure passion and pasttime can always wait the next day, when there’s enough time.

WeblogsINC has been paying great bloggers (including a couple of Filipinos) to blog for the network at $7PHP 411INR 593EUR 7CNY 51 to $12PHP 704INR 1,017EUR 11CNY 87 per post and so far business looks good.

It’s all about the business and Jason seems to be putting in the right bets in his previous ventures. It’s a win-win deal — Netscape gets more active and talented contributors and these people get paid for something they’ve been doing for free before.

I have to give it to him — he really knows how to stir things up. AOL’s lucky to have him in their wing.