I don't see how digg is similar to kuro5hin or delicious - kuro5hin was about essays, delicious was primarily about serving personal needs (saving bookmarks) first. They seem very different to me. Digg also inspired a bunch of similar sites using the same mechanism (like Reddit and Hacker News) which suggests that digg had something genuinely new to offer.
Unless I'm mistaken, kuro5hin had a voting mechanism to determine what appeared on the front page. And delicious had it's "popular" page. Anyway my argument is:
a. "connections" are a scarce commodity, and probably the primary thing that a startup needs.
b. A market mechanism is replacing influencers. That's most likely a good thing.
and an additional remark - the first people who do this are obviously going to price high. The prices will get driven down by the same supply/demand mechanism that created the market in the first place.
