Can't We All Just Play Nice?

In the business world, we tend to categorize all other relevant businesses as partners or competitors. Because of its unique design, Digg has effectively positioned itself in a different type of relationship with other comparable businesses.

Imagine that you desire to start your own comedy blog. How do you get content? First, you could create it all yourself. Aside from being difficult and time-consuming, you’re now competing with a billion other comedy blogs for hits. Alternatively, you could form relationships with other content providers and get content from them at some cost either monetary or otherwise. While you’re comparing the relative down-sides, let’s consider Digg.

Digg doesn’t post any unique content. It all comes from outside sites. At the same time, it dodges the need to negotiate with these sites by posting links to them, rather than just copying their content. The end result of these “anonymous partnerships” is a hit for Digg and a hit for every site that a given user clicks on.

We can learn a lot from the way that Digg has managed to turn all of its potential competitors “anonymous partners”. In other businesses, this may not be as easy, or even possible at all, but it should be considered.