Misplaced Pages

Latest revision as of 17:17, 19 December 2024

This article needs to be updated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (June 2015)

Digg, Inc.

Type of site	Social news
Available in	English
Founded	November 2004; 20 years ago (2004-11)
Headquarters	New York City, United States
Area served	Worldwide
Owner	BuySellAds.com, Inc.
Founder(s)	Kevin Rose
Key people	Michael O'Connor (CEO)
Revenue	Unknown
Employees	25 (2018)
URL	digg.com
Advertising	None
Registration	Optional
Launched	December 5, 2004; 20 years ago (2004-12-05)
Current status	Active
Written in	Python

Digg (stylized in lowercase as digg) is an American news aggregator with a curated front page, aiming to select articles specifically for the Internet audience such as science, trending political issues, and viral Internet issues. It was launched in its current form on July 31, 2012, with support for sharing content to other social platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.

Digg was formerly a popular social news website, allowing people to vote user-generated and web content up or down, called digging and burying, respectively. In 2012, Quantcast estimated Digg's monthly U.S. unique visits at 3.8 million. Digg's popularity prompted the creation of similar sites such as Reddit.

In July 2008, the former company took part in advanced acquisition talks with Google for a reported $200 million price tag, but the deal ultimately fell through. After a controversial 2010 redesign and the departure of co-founders Jay Adelson and Kevin Rose, in July 2012 Digg was sold in three parts: the Digg brand, website, and technology were sold to Betaworks for an estimated $500,000; 15 staff were transferred to The Washington Post Company's "SocialCode" for a reported $12 million; and a suite of patents was sold to LinkedIn for about $4 million.

In April 2018, Digg was purchased by BuySellAds, an advertising company, for an undisclosed amount.

It is rumoured that Kevin Rose has purchased Digg back and is relaunching it in 2025. Their Twitter account teases the date March 8, 2025 as "3825" is used in multiple images uploaded in December.

History

Digg started as an experiment in November 2004 by collaborators Kevin Rose, Owen Byrne, Ron Gorodetzky, and Jay Adelson. The original design by Dan Ries was free of advertisements. To monetize, the company originally used Google AdSense but switched to MSN adCenter in 2007.

The site's main function was to let users discover, share and recommend web content. Members of the community could submit a webpage for general consideration. Other members could vote that page up ("digg") or down ("bury"). Although voting took place on digg.com, many websites added "digg" buttons to their pages, allowing users to vote as they browsed the web. The end product was a series of wide-ranging, constantly updated lists of popular and trending content from around the Internet, aggregated by a social network.

Additions and improvements were made throughout the website's first years. Digg v2 was released in July 2005, with a new interface by web design company silverorange. New features included a friends list, and the ability to "digg" a story without being redirected to a success page. One year later, as part of Digg v3, the website added specific categories for technology, science, world and business, videos, entertainment, and gaming, as well as a "view all" section that merged all categories. Further interface adjustments were made in August 2007.

By 2008, Digg's homepage was attracting over 236 million visitors annually, according to a Compete.com survey. Digg had grown large enough that it was thought to affect the traffic of submitted web pages. Some pages experienced a sudden increase in traffic shortly after being submitted; some Digg users refer to this as the "Digg effect".

Redesign

CEO Jay Adelson said in 2010 that the site would go through some major changes. In the interview with Wired magazine, Adelson said that "Every single THING has changed" and that "the entire website has been rewritten." The company changed from MySQL to Cassandra, a distributed database system; in a blog post, VP Engineering John Quinn said that the move was "bold". Adelson summed up the new Digg by saying, "We've got a new backend, a new infrastructure layer, a new services layer, new machines—everything."

Adelson stepped down as CEO on April 5, 2010, to explore entrepreneurial opportunities, months before the launch date of Digg v4. He had been the company's CEO since its inception. Kevin Rose, another original founder, stepped in temporarily as CEO and Chairman.

Digg's v4 release on August 25, 2010, was marred by site-wide bugs and glitches. Digg users reacted with hostile verbal opposition. Beyond the release, Digg faced problems due to so-called "power users" who would manipulate the article recommendation features to only support one another's postings, flooding the site with articles only from these users and making it impossible to have genuine content from non-power users appear on the front page. Frustrations with the system led to dwindling web traffic, exacerbated by heavy competition from Facebook, whose like buttons started to appear on websites next to Digg's. High staff turnover included the departure of head of business development Matt Van Horn, shortly after v4's release.

On September 1, 2010, Matt Williams took over as CEO, ending Rose's troubled tenure as interim chief executive.

In 2013, Andrew McLaughlin took over as CEO after Digg was sold to BetaWorks and re-launched.

In 2015, Gary Liu took over as Digg CEO.

In 2016, Joshua Auerbach took over as interim CEO.

In September 2016, Digg announced that it would begin a data partnership with Gannett. The "seven figure" investment would give Gannett access to real-time trend analysis of Digg's 7.5 million pieces of content.

In 2017, Michael O'Connor took over as CEO, and continues as CEO today.

Sale and relaunch

In July 2012, Digg was sold in three parts:

1. the Digg brand, website, and technology were sold to Betaworks for $500,000;
2. 15 staff were transferred to The Washington Post's Code3 project for $12 million;
3. the patent portfolio was sold to LinkedIn for approximately $4 million.

There were reports that Digg had been trying to sell itself to a larger company since 2006. The most notable attempt took place in July 2008, when Google entered talks to buy Digg for around $200 million. Google walked away from negotiations during the deal's due diligence phase, informing Digg on July 25 that it was no longer interested in the purchase. Digg subsequently accepted further venture capital funding, receiving $28.7 million in September 2008 from investors such as Highland Capital Partners to move headquarters and add staff. Several months later, CEO Jay Adelson said Digg was no longer for sale.

On July 20, 2012, new owners Betaworks announced via Twitter that they were rebuilding Digg from scratch, "turning back into a start-up". Betaworks gave the project a six-week deadline. Surveys of existing users, collected through the website ReThinkDigg.com, were used to inform the development of a new user interface and user experience.

The "rethought" Digg reset its version number and launched as Digg v1 a day prior to the Betaworks project deadline, on July 31, 2012. It featured an editorially driven front page, more images, and top, popular and upcoming stories. Users could access a new scoring system. There was increased support for sharing content to other social platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. Digg's front page content was selected by editors, instead of users on other communities like Reddit.

Until its sale to BuySellAds.com in 2018, its offices were located at 50 Eldridge Street in New York City's Chinatown.

Features

Digg Reader

In response to the announced shutdown of Google Reader, Digg announced on March 14, 2013 that it was working on its own RSS reader. Digg Reader launched on June 28, 2013 as a web and iOS application. An Android app was released on August 29, 2013. Digg announced that it would shut down Digg Reader on March 26, 2018.

Issues relating to former Digg website

Organized promotion and censorship by users

It was possible for users to have disproportionate influence on Digg, either by themselves or in teams. These users were sometimes motivated to promote or bury pages for political or financial reasons.

Serious attempts by users to game the site began in 2006. A top user was banned after agreeing to promote a story for cash to an undercover Digg sting operation. Another group of users openly formed a 'Bury Brigade' to remove "spam" articles about US politician Ron Paul; critics accused the group of attempting to stifle any mention of Ron Paul on Digg.

Digg hired computer scientist Anton Kast to develop a diversity algorithm that would prevent special interest groups from dominating Digg. During a town hall meeting, Digg executives responded to criticism by removing some features that gave superusers extra weight, but declined to make "buries" transparent.

However, later that year Google increased its page rank for Digg. Shortly afterwards, many 'pay for Diggs' startups were created to profit from the opportunity. According to TechCrunch, one top user charged $700 per story, with a $500 bonus if the story reached the front page.

Digg Patriots was a conservative Yahoo! Groups mailing list, with an associated page on coRank, accused of coordinated, politically motivated behavior on Digg. Progressive blogger Ole Ole Olson wrote in August 2010 that Digg Patriots undertook a year-long effort of organized burying of seemingly liberal articles from Digg's Upcoming module. He also accused leading members of vexatiously reporting liberal users for banning (and those who seemed liberal), and creating "sleeper" accounts in the event of administrators banning their accounts. These and other actions would violate Digg's terms of usage. Olson's post was immediately followed by the disbanding and closure of the DiggPatriots list, and an investigation into the matter by Digg.

AACS encryption key controversy

On May 1, 2007, an article appeared on Digg's homepage that contained the encryption key for the AACS digital rights management protection of HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc. Then Digg, "acting on the advice of its lawyers", removed posting submissions about the secret number from its database and banned several users for submitting it. The removals were seen by many Digg users as a capitulation to corporate interests and an assault on free speech. A statement by Jay Adelson attributed the article's take-down to an attempt to comply with cease and desist letters from the Advanced Access Content System consortium and cited Digg's Terms of Use as justification for taking down the article. Although some users defended Digg's actions, as a whole the community staged a widespread revolt with numerous articles and comments made using the encryption key. The scope of the user response was so great that one of the Digg users referred to it as a "digital Boston Tea Party". The response was also directly responsible for Digg reversing the policy and stating: "But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you've made it clear. You'd rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won't delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be."

Digg v4

Digg's version 4 release was initially unstable. The site was unreachable or unstable for weeks after its launch on August 25, 2010. Many users, upon finally reaching the site, complained about the new design and the removal of many features (such as bury, favorites, friends submissions, upcoming pages, subcategories, videos and history search). Kevin Rose replied to complaints on his blog, promising to fix the algorithm and restore some features.

Alexis Ohanian, founder of rival site Reddit, said in an open letter to Rose:

this new version of digg reeks of VC meddling. It's cobbling together features from more popular sites and departing from the core of digg, which was to "give the power back to the people."

Disgruntled users declared a "quit Digg day" on August 30, 2010, and used Digg's own auto-submit feature to fill the front page with content from Reddit. Reddit also temporarily added the Digg shovel to their logo to welcome fleeing Digg users.

Digg's traffic dropped significantly after the launch of version 4, and publishers reported a drop in direct referrals from stories on Digg's front page. New CEO Matt Williams attempted to address some of the users' concerns in a blog post on October 12, 2010, promising to reinstate many of the features that had been removed.

Timeline

This section needs to be updated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (March 2020)

See also

• Delicious
• diggnation
• Facebook
• Fark
• Menéame
• Mixx
• Propeller.com
• Reddit
• Slashdot
• Social bookmarking
• StumbleUpon
• Virato Social News
• Web 2.0
• Wykop.pl

References

1. About, Digg.com, archived from the original on November 29, 2018, retrieved February 28, 2009
2. "Digg Inc.: Private Company Information". Bloomberg.com. Archived from the original on September 23, 2018. Retrieved September 23, 2018.
3. Kevin Rose's Next Move: Partner at Google Ventures, archived from the original on August 5, 2012, retrieved August 2, 2012
4. "Accelent fills CEO position for Digg". April 5, 2017. Archived from the original on September 21, 2018. Retrieved January 13, 2018.
5. "FAQ". Digg.com. Archived from the original on October 19, 2020. Retrieved October 19, 2020.
6. "Jobs". Digg.com. Archived from the original on November 28, 2018. Retrieved November 23, 2016.
7. "digg.com – Quantcast Audience Profile". Quantcast.com. July 16, 2012. Archived from the original on June 24, 2012. Retrieved July 16, 2012.
8. McCarthy, Pat (September 10, 2006). "Revisiting Top 10 Web Predictions of 2006". Conversionrater.com. Archived from the original on October 7, 2008. Retrieved February 27, 2009.
9. Madrigal, Alexis C. "The Big Digg Lesson: A Social Network Is Worth Precisely as Much as Its Community". The Atlantic. Archived from the original on March 22, 2018. Retrieved March 21, 2018.
10. ^ Walker, Joseph; Ante, Spencer E. (July 13, 2012). "Once a Social Media Star, Digg Sells for $500,000". The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on December 15, 2014. Retrieved July 16, 2012.
11. ^ Tsukayama, Hayley (May 10, 2012). "SocialCode hires 15 employees from Digg.com". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on May 19, 2012. Retrieved July 16, 2012.
12. ^ Burns, Chris (July 13, 2012). "Digg sale splits the company three ways for $16m total". Slashgear. Archived from the original on July 15, 2012. Retrieved July 16, 2012.
13. "The beloved Digg, once the chief rival to Reddit, was just sold to an advertising tech company". Business Insider. April 25, 2018. Archived from the original on September 23, 2018. Retrieved September 23, 2018.
14. https://x.com/digg/status/1865195680823939540
15. Rose, Kevin (July 25, 2007). "Digg: New ad provider". Archived from the original on July 19, 2010. Retrieved July 16, 2012.
16. "Compete.com". Siteanalytics.compete.com. Archived from the original on January 9, 2011. Retrieved November 7, 2010.
17. ^ Calore, Michael (March 15, 2010). "Wired Interview". Wired. Archived from the original on March 17, 2010. Retrieved March 15, 2010.
18. Quinn, John. "Cassandra Switch". Digg. Archived from the original on March 7, 2012. Retrieved July 16, 2012.
19. Adelson, Jay (April 4, 2010). "Update from Jay". Digg. Archived from the original on September 20, 2011. Retrieved July 16, 2012.
20. McCarthy, Caroline (June 21, 2010). "Changing the rules of the Digg game". CNET News. Archived from the original on July 30, 2012. Retrieved July 16, 2012.
21. McCarthy, Caroline (August 26, 2010). "Digg's Matt Van Horn leaving for start-up". CNET News. Archived from the original on August 27, 2010. Retrieved September 2, 2010.
22. "Digg CEO Gary Liu is leaving to head up Alibaba-owned newspaper SCMP – TechCrunch". techcrunch.com. November 23, 2016. Archived from the original on March 22, 2018. Retrieved March 21, 2018.
23. "Digg CEO Gary Liu is leaving to head up Alibaba-owned newspaper SCMP – TechCrunch". techcrunch.com. November 23, 2016. Archived from the original on March 22, 2018. Retrieved March 26, 2018.
24. Auerbach, Joshua. "We've Got Some Very Digg News To Share". Archived from the original on June 23, 2017. Retrieved March 21, 2018.
25. Alpert, Lukas I. (September 13, 2016). "Gannett Leads Investment Round in Social Media Pioneer Digg". The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on October 10, 2016. Retrieved October 11, 2016.
26. Arrington, Michael (November 7, 2007). "Just Sell Digg Already, Jay". Techcrunch.com. Archived from the original on March 2, 2009. Retrieved February 27, 2009.
27. Arrington, Michael (July 26, 2008). "Google Walks Away From Digg Deal". washingtonpost.com. Archived from the original on October 10, 2012. Retrieved February 27, 2009.
28. "Digg digs up $28.7 Million". CNNMoney. November 24, 2008. Archived from the original on July 8, 2011. Retrieved March 15, 2011.
29. "Big News: Expanding & Growing Digg". blog.digg.com. September 24, 2008. Archived from the original on March 15, 2009. Retrieved February 27, 2009.
30. Ante, Spencer E. (December 2008). "Digg: Not For Sale". Archived from the original on December 12, 2008. Retrieved December 9, 2008.
31. ^ "Rethink Digg Twitter Announcement". July 2012. Archived from the original on April 9, 2016. Retrieved July 20, 2012.
32. ^ "Rethink Digg". Archived from the original on July 21, 2012. Retrieved July 20, 2012.
33. ^ "The New Digg". July 2012. Archived from the original on February 2, 2013. Retrieved July 20, 2012.
34. ^ Murphey, Samantha (July 2012). "Rebuilding Digg". Mashable. Archived from the original on July 21, 2012. Retrieved July 20, 2012.
35. "Digg Reader is Live!". Digg.com. March 14, 2013. Archived from the original on July 3, 2013. Retrieved June 28, 2013.
36. "Goodbye to Digg Reader". Archived from the original on March 14, 2018. Retrieved March 14, 2018.
37. Dave (April 20, 2006). "Digg Corrupted: Editor's Playground, not User-Driven Website". Forevergeek. Archived from the original on July 21, 2010. Retrieved August 4, 2010.
38. Sandoval, Greg (December 18, 2006). "Digg continues to battle phony stories". CNET News. Archived from the original on May 10, 2011. Retrieved August 4, 2010.
39. Adam (December 23, 2007). "Digg's Ron Paul 'Bury Brigade' exposed". Archived from the original on May 14, 2011. Retrieved August 4, 2010.
40. Ben (February 26, 2008). "Digg's 20 Questions: a Town Hall Recap". Bloggingexperiment. Archived from the original on November 23, 2010. Retrieved August 4, 2010.
41. Arrington, Michael (September 3, 2008). "Want On The Digg Home Page? That'll Be $1,200". Techcruch. Archived from the original on July 22, 2010. Retrieved August 4, 2010.
42. "Massive Censorship of Digg Uncovered « OOO". Archived from the original on May 8, 2013. Retrieved August 7, 2010.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
43. Olson, Ole Ole (August 5, 2010). "The Rigging Of Digg: How A Covert Mob Of Conservatives Hijacked The Web's Top Social News Site". The Public Record. Archived from the original on August 26, 2021. Retrieved August 7, 2010.
44. Halliday, Josh (August 6, 2010). "Digg investigates claims of conservative 'censorship'". The Guardian. Archived from the original on November 15, 2016. Retrieved December 17, 2016.
45. Stone, Brad (May 3, 2007). "In Web Uproar, Antipiracy Code Spreads Wildly". The New York Times. Archived from the original on December 11, 2008. Retrieved July 2, 2007.
46. Adelson, Jay. "Digg the Blog: What's Happening with HD-DVD Stories?". Archived from the original on October 17, 2012. Retrieved May 2, 2007.
47. "Cease and desist letters backfire horribly against AACS". TGdaily. May 1, 2007. Archived from the original on May 4, 2007. Retrieved February 27, 2009.
48. "Digg losing control of their site". Weblog.infoworld.com. Archived from the original on December 22, 2008. Retrieved February 27, 2009.
49. Sanders, Tom. "DRM lobby tries to get HD DVD genie back into the bottle". Computing.co.uk. Archived from the original on February 19, 2009. Retrieved February 27, 2009.
50. Yam, Marcus. "DailyTech: AACS Key Censorship Leads to First Internet Riot". Archived from the original on May 4, 2007. Retrieved May 2, 2007.
51. "BBC News: DVD DRM row sparks user rebellion". May 2, 2007. Archived from the original on May 16, 2007. Retrieved May 2, 2007.
52. Forbes.com, Digg's DRM Revolt
53. Rose, Kevin (May 1, 2007). "Digg This: 09 F9 ". Digg the Blog. Digg Inc. Archived from the original on April 22, 2019. Retrieved May 2, 2007.
54. Ingram, Mathew (August 26, 2010). "Digg Redesign Met with a Thumbs Down". Archived from the original on August 28, 2010. Retrieved August 29, 2010.
55. Rose, Kevin (August 27, 2010). "Digg v4: release, iterate, repeat". Archived from the original on August 29, 2010. Retrieved August 27, 2010.
56. Ohanian, Alexis (May 28, 2010). "An open letter to Kevin Rose". Archived from the original on June 1, 2010. Retrieved August 29, 2010.
57. Lardinois, Frederic. "Digg User Rebellion Continues: Reddit Now Rules the Front Page". ReadWriteWeb. Archived from the original on August 31, 2010. Retrieved August 31, 2010.
58. Friedman, Megan (August 30, 2010). "Digg Users Lash Out At New Format, Join Forces with Reddit". Time. Archived from the original on August 30, 2010. Retrieved August 31, 2010.
59. McCarthy, Caroline. "Angry Digg users flood home page with Reddit links". CNet News. Archived from the original on July 13, 2012. Retrieved August 31, 2010.
60. Kanalley, Craig (August 30, 2010). "Angry Users SLAM Digg With Links From Rival Reddit". The Huffington Post. Archived from the original on September 1, 2010. Retrieved August 31, 2010.
61. Wilhelm, Alex (September 23, 2010). "Digg's traffic is collapsing at home and abroad". The Next Web. Archived from the original on September 27, 2010. Retrieved October 20, 2010.
62. Plocek, Keith. "The Digg Effect v4". Social Keith. Archived from the original on October 22, 2010. Retrieved October 20, 2010.
63. MacManus, Richard (February 1, 2006). "Interview with Digg founder Kevin Rose". Web 2.0 Explorer. ZDNet. Archived from the original on August 8, 2010. Retrieved August 2, 2010.
64. "API query for story #01". API. Digg. Retrieved August 2, 2010.
65. "Kevin Rose shows off Digg on The Screen Savers". The Screen Savers. TechTV. Archived from the original on August 26, 2021. Retrieved August 2, 2010.
66. "Digg Podcast #001 Released". Diggnation. Revision3. Archived from the original on July 26, 2010. Retrieved August 2, 2010.
67. MacManus, Richard (December 27, 2005). "Gaming Digg: the KoolAidGuy saga". Web 2.0 Explorer. ZDNet. Archived from the original on July 17, 2010. Retrieved August 2, 2010.
68. "Dan Huard is digg user AlbertPacino". wehatetech. Archived from the original on January 20, 2008. Retrieved August 2, 2010.
69. Macgyver (April 19, 2006). "Digg Army: Right in Line". Forever Geek. Archived from the original on August 14, 2010. Retrieved August 2, 2010.
70. Rose, Kevin (February 1, 2007). "A couple updates ..." Digg blog. Archived from the original on July 21, 2010. Retrieved August 2, 2010.
71. Burton, Jen (October 3, 2008). "Update on Script Abuse". Community blog. Digg. Archived from the original on July 19, 2010. Retrieved August 2, 2010.
72. Alex, Wilhelm (August 3, 2010). "The New Digg Cometh?". Archived from the original on October 5, 2013. Retrieved January 30, 2014.
73. Arrington, Michael (October 25, 2010). "Digg To Layoff 37% Of Staff, Product Refocus Imminent". Techcrunch.com. Archived from the original on November 6, 2010. Retrieved November 7, 2010.
74. Christina Warren, mashable.com. "Kevin Rose Resigns from Digg [Report]". Archived 2011-03-20 at the Wayback Machine March 18, 2011. Retrieved March 18, 2011.
75. Walker, Joseph; Ante, Spencer E. (July 12, 2012). "Once a Social Media Star, Digg Sells for $500,000". The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on December 15, 2014. Retrieved July 13, 2012.
76. Digg's resurrection: can Betaworks revive the once-loved site?, TheVerge.com, August 1, 2012, archived from the original on August 3, 2012, retrieved August 2, 2012
77. Digg Reader is Live!, Digg Blog, June 28, 2013, archived from the original on June 29, 2013, retrieved June 28, 2013
78. Digging In, Medium, March 17, 2017, archived from the original on January 14, 2018, retrieved March 17, 2017

External links

• Official website

• News aggregators
• American news websites
• Social bookmarking websites
• Internet properties established in 2004
• Social information processing
• 2004 establishments in California
• Companies based in New York City
• Censored works
• Social software
• Shorty Award winners