Some problems: That model has minimal cost of entry. Therefore an unpredictable and vast number of competitors, therefore high risk. Google could decide to d

Some problems: That model has minimal cost of entry. Therefore an unpredictable and vast number of competitors, therefore high risk. Google could decide to do it one day on a whim and with their resources they would do it better and bam! whatever time/money you spent on it would be a loss. Not sure what you mean by publisher and content, all your examples hn, digg, delicious I wouldn't consider content publishers at all. The traditional content publishers such as newspapers don't have the culture, management, payscales to attract and support large teams of top-notch devs. btw newspapers (and other content producers) already do a lot of filtering. Might not be that noticeable because the crap that gets "downvoted" never makes it to print/online and they filter for "mainstream" not intelligent, well-read, young entrepreneurs. Maybe a great idea for a new, young, small startup. As a model for existing content publishers, not so sure.