Portals paying top users

Jason Calacanis reports that he is willing to pay the top 50 digg, Reddit, Flickr, and Newsvine users $1,000 a month to continue doing what they’re already doing. That’s right, get paid to do what you already do – sitting on your butt all day clicking through to interesting stories, reading, digging, etc. Unreal right? Damn dreamy if you ask me!

On top of that, Yahoo is paying Meebo users $150 to use the client exclusively for a few weeks. Now why would Yahoo have a sudden interest in Meebo?