Recently, Digg hired Allen & Co. to “explore its options” which is how Investment Bankers say “for sale”.

For a site like Digg it is natural that the managers and investors would be looking for an out. What is unusual is that its users feel they have a right to tell Jay Adelson and Kevin Rose how to run their business.

In sites like Digg where users create almost all of the value of the site, do they have a say in the future of the site?

Companies love the idea of social media because their users do the work. They create the content, they create the network effects, they create the page views. But they also gain a sense of entitlement. They feel like they created the site.

Compare this to other current mergers. In the Microsoft Yahoo merger, most users don’t really care (except Flickr users who protested). I bet no one other than Wall Street really cares about Delta’s proposed merger with Northwest.

This is the dilemma of social media. What obligations do sites have to their users when it comes to business decisions that impact the user experience?

Photo from ArsTechnica

37Signals is profiled in this month’s Wired. It paints a picture of some very talented and intelligent people who come across as supremely arrogant.

I have long admired Jason’s approach to design and technology. His fervent and passionate drive for simplicity is admirable. I don’t agree with everything he says or does, but I do see his point of view.

One of the criticisms against 37Signals is that they are “arrogant” that their attitude is dismissive of other point’s of view. But I don’t think they’re arrogant, instead I think they are unapologetic about who they are and what they value.

They don’t want to apologize for the decisions they make and as a result it comes off as being arrogant. By definition arrogance has an “exaggerated sense of one’s own importance”. Exaggeration leads to an unrealistic or distorted sense of reality.

I don’t believe Jason exaggerates his importance. Quite the opposite. He says that his products aren’t for everyone. He has always stated that they design products for themselves and no one else.

There have been times where Jason will talk in absolutes about being small as if there is no other choice and that you are stupid if you are large. This is arrogant because it exaggerates the importance of being small.

I believe he speaks this way for effect and because he is passionate. If you listen carefully, Jason will qualify that this is what works for them. Unfortunately, it’s sometimes the last thing he says or buries it in other points.

It is easy to confuse arrogance and being unapologetic but they are very different things.

There has been a lot of talk about LinkedIn (IPO, News Corp buyout, Facebook buyout).

Jim Balsillie just gave a presentation at the GSMA World Congress saying that the future of business communications lies in social networking.

It would make so much sense for RIM to buy LinkedIn. RIM could get a social networking service that could instantly enhance the value of its devices.

This is my Valentine’s Day UX match made in heaven.

[Full disclosure: We still own RIM in our UXFund]

Verizon is launching a very sleek touch screen phone from LG called the Voyager.

“We think it’ll be the best phone … this year. It will kill the iPhone,” Verizon Wireless Chief Marketing Officer Mike Lanman said in an interview.

Stop trying to actively “kill” your competition. Instead of trying to kill the iPhone, try to develop good product. Make plans people want. Chasing one product with another is a silly game. You are just playing catch up.

I’m sure Mike regrets the hyperbolic statement he made, because there is a good chance he won’t “kill” the iPhone and it’s not where he and Verizon should be focussing.

In comparison RIM were quite happy (publicly) when the iPhone came out, welcoming them to the market. In the ensuing months RIM has continued to release very good product including the Blackberry Curve type=”text/javascript”>Blackberry Curve type=”text/javascript”>AKPC_IDS += “277,”;

Many people don’t like Seth Godin because he is responsible for the term Viral Marketing. Some people don’t like him because of his bald head. But this talk from Ted is really good. He has a great way of telling stories.

A great video showing how consumers just aren’t feeling the love anymore…

Signing up for flight notifications on airline sites is a total waste of time. Last night while flying from Boston to Toronto I asked aircanada.com to let me know if my flight was going to be delayed. As soon as I signed up I received an email letting me know that my flight was delayed 20 minutes (from 6:10 to 6:30)…

When I got to the airport I saw my flight was now delayed to 7 pm. Thanks for the heads up Aircanada.com. Sitting in the waiting area it was once again delayed to 7:10…. Once again no head’s up from Aircanada.com. My flight didn’t leave until 8:30 pm but as far as my notifications were concerned I was only 20 minutes delayed.

Two things are broken in this experience

1) Aircanada.com has limited awareness of delays. So right there that feature is completely neutered.

2) Airlines do not delay/cancel flights until the last possible minute. How many times have you sat in the waiting area watching your flight time come and go and only after was the flight officially “delayed”? Since you need to be at the airport an hour or two ahead of time and flights get delayed at the last possible minute, this feature does not line up with the business.

Flight status notification is completely useless.

Me pissed off at Logan

Yahoo! is doing some spring cleaning. They announced today they would be “retiring” Yahoo! Auctions. No real surprise. Traffic stunk versus EBay. It was a mediocre me-too product. This comes on the heels of announcing that Yahoo! Photos was getting folded into Flickr .

I think this is great. Yahoo! has too many products. Jerry Yang used to refer to his homepage as the “I didn’t know Yahoo! did that” page. Yahoo! extended itself into so many areas that it would be inevitable not all of them would be successful.

I think shuttering some of the properties will be better for users, resources will get focussed on properties that have users. And good for their business by putting budgets in areas where there is more potential to be dominant.

I always like Jack Welch’s model. GE was either number one in a market or number two trying to be number one. If they weren’t, they got out.