Kevin Rose makes Wall Street Journal free for Digg users
"What would happen if a Web site's readers — instead of editors — could decide which stories should be published?" The Wall Street Journal posed that question nearly two years ago, in an article about Digg, the social-news website. Now, the Journal's editors are letting Digg users make those decisions for them. Articles on WSJ.com will carry Digg buttons, says Digg founder Kevin Rose in a blog post. When users "digg," or vote for, the stories, they won't require a subscription to read. Since it's easy to submit articles to Digg, this makes the entire website essentially free — or at least the stories Digg users care about. News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch, the Journal's new owner, has been making noises about dropping the website's subscription barrier. This deal with Digg pretty much tears down the paywall for him.