Bookmark this post? Go on. You know you want to. Please. I’m begging you. OK, how about a few quid?

The rise of social media, and bookmarking services like del.ic.ious, Digg, Newsvine and the rest is part of the anonymous camaradery of the web. We share something we like with strangers. How digitally public-spirited of us…

But there’s a snake in the grass. Columbia student Dave Cohn (Digidave), reveals the rise of a new editorial process via Digg:

The top one hundred contributors — determined by their success in placing their submissions on the front page — are responsible for more than half the content that fills the front page each day. This group has been playing the part of a collective editor, and offers have poured in to pay popular Digg contributors for their “services.”

Many of these offers have been made out in the open, like Netscape’s offer to pay some of the top Diggers $1,000 a month to become permanent fixtures on Netscape’s Digg-like home page. Today, almost half of Netscape’s sixteen “Navigators” — paid social bookmakers — were originally top contributors to Digg. But other offers have been made in secret, according to Johnson, and he isn’t the only one being given the chance to Digg for cash. “One site offered me $100 for every submission that I got onto the front page of Digg,” says Derek Van Vliet, or BloodJunkie, who is ranked sixth on Digg and who was among those Diggers who took Netscape’s offer.

So is this subversive and disgusting or successful and the future of editing? Love to know what people think…