What Happened to Digg? The Untold Story of the Internet’s Forgotten Giant

Digg’s story reads like a classic Silicon Valley cautionary tale. The platform once graced BusinessWeek’s cover with the headline “How This Kid Made $60 Million in 18 Months” and reached a $160 million valuation. Now it stands as a reminder of how quickly digital success can fade.

The platform launched in late 2004 and quickly became one of the internet’s most popular web portals. Digg’s user base grew strong, making it a major competitor to Reddit. The team began their mission to “democratize” content and news by letting users “digg” interesting content to promote it. 

The platform’s dramatic decline started with the v4 redesign in 2010, which users widely rejected. Digg failed because it couldn’t adapt to its growing community, ignored valuable feedback, and watched its users move to Reddit’s more welcoming environment.

The Digg story took an unexpected turn recently. Kevin Rose and Alexis Ohanian bought Digg from Money Group and plan to bring it back as a community-first social platform. Their new vision contrasts with today’s toxic social media landscape, with AI features and a return to community-driven roots.

This piece will take you through Digg’s rise and fall, get into the key mistakes behind its downfall, and show what might come next for this former internet giant.

The Rise of Digg: From Startup to Internet Sensation

Digg made its debut on the internet in November 2004. Kevin Rose, Owen Byrne, Ron Gorodetzky, and Jay Adelson started it as an experiment. Rose invested $4,000-$5,000 of his personal savings to bootstrap this humble startup that would reshape the web’s most influential platforms.

How Digg started and what made it unique

The revolutionary aspect of Digg came from its simple yet powerful concept. Users could submit interesting content, and the community decided what deserved attention through an innovative voting system. The site’s AJAX technology created a continuous connection where users voted without page refreshes. This technical novelty delighted early adopters.

Kevin Rose, known from his time at TechTV, wanted to create an improved, more social version of Slashdot. His vision combined social bookmarking, networking, and collective filtering elements. 

The platform’s core mechanics included:

  • User submissions of links with titles and descriptions
  • Binary voting through “Digg” (upvote) or “Bury” (downvote) buttons
  • Front page promotion based on popularity algorithms
  • Community features including comments and user profiles

The early mission to democratize content

“We have to give the media back to the people,” declared Jay Adelson, Digg’s CEO. The platform had a clear mission to democratize content and news. Digg positioned itself as a democratic alternative to traditional media outlets, where the “entire planet” could determine which stories were most relevant.

This vision drew over 236 million annual visitors by 2008. Digg reached its peak around 2009 with approximately 30 million monthly unique visitors, competing with established news sites. Business Week featured Rose on its cover with the headline “How This Kid Made $60 Million in 18 Months,” valuing Digg at $200 million.

Digg vs Reddit: the original rivalry

Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian launched Reddit in 2005 with $12,000 from Y Combinator to create their “front page for the Internet”. Digg held significant advantages despite their similar concepts: a thriving community, larger team, and millions in funding.

The platforms took different approaches to controversial content. Digg removed problematic material, often against user wishes. Reddit defended content and prioritized free expression. This fundamental difference in philosophy contributed to their different paths in the following years.

The Fall of a Giant: What Happened to Digg?

Digg’s promising path came to an abrupt halt with the disastrous launch of version 4 (v4) in August 2010. This story stands as one of the internet’s most dramatic downfalls. Tech giants can collapse when they lose touch with their community’s needs.

The Digg v4 redesign backlash

The v4 redesign aimed to refresh the platform but triggered its collapse instead. CEO Jay Adelson made bold claims that “every single thing has changed”. The team switched from MySQL to Cassandra database systems and rebuilt their strong infrastructure – a move their VP of Engineering labeled “bold”.

The August 25th launch brought site-wide bugs and glitches that left users frustrated. The platform removed popular features, especially the “bury” button that let users downvote content. Publisher-submitted content took priority over user submissions, which changed Digg’s community-driven spirit.

Power users and content manipulation

Digg faced system manipulation problems before v4. A small group of “power users” held too much control – research showed just 100 users submitted 56% of front-page content. This created room for corruption, and some users charged between $300-$500 to promote submissions.

Groups like the “Digg Patriots” faced accusations of burying liberal-leaning articles, which damaged the platform’s credibility.

Loss of community trust and migration to Reddit

These changes devastated the platform. Digg’s traffic dropped by 26% in the U.S. and 34% in the U.K. after v4’s launch. Reddit grew rapidly during this time, with traffic rising by 230% in 2010.

Kevin Rose responded dismissively to criticism, saying “if Reddit is your new home and it’s something you really enjoy I’m all for that”. The core team shrank as Digg laid off 25 of its 67 staff members. Monthly unique visitors dropped by 90% from peak levels by July 2012.

Digg’s value ended up falling from a rumored $200 million to just $500,000. This marked the end of what was once an internet powerhouse.

Why Did Digg Fail? A Closer Look at the Mistakes

Digg’s dramatic collapse came from three basic mistakes that turned a vibrant community into a digital ghost town.

Ignoring user feedback

The management team at Digg implemented radical changes without considering warnings from early adopters and beta testers about v4. Their dismissive approach went beyond just the redesign. 

The company took too long to respond after users showed outrage following v4’s launch. Kevin Rose showed his disconnect from the community. He used Digg less than once every four days and stayed away for three weeks in December.

Over-prioritizing publishers over users

Digg betrayed its core principle of “giving power back to the people” by putting corporate interests ahead of community curation. The v4 redesign led to just six corporate websites dominating 56% of frontpage content. The platform let publishers auto-submit news stories through its API. Reddit’s co-founder Alexis Ohanian called this out: “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”.

Failure to adapt to changing social media trends

Digg made a crucial mistake by outsourcing social networking features instead of building them in-house as Facebook and Twitter grew. The platform tried to add social features like following other users, but these attempts fell short compared to dedicated social platforms. The platform’s categorization system stayed “bizarre and heavily biased according to the founder’s semi-adolescent world view”. It showed an unexplainable bias against blog content despite changes in the digital world.

Venture capitalists pushed Digg to make money, which led to decisions that put monetization ahead of user experience. These combined mistakes created perfect conditions for Reddit to take over. Reddit “continued to stay true to its user base despite pressure from its corporate overlords” and captured Digg’s disappointed community.

The Comeback: How Digg Plans to Rebuild in 2024

Digg has awakened from years of dormancy with an unexpected comeback. Kevin Rose made a surprising announcement that he bought back Digg from Money Group for an undisclosed sum with plans to rebuild it. The story became more fascinating when he partnered with former rival Alexis Ohanian, Reddit’s co-founder, which created an unlikely alliance between these once fierce competitors.

Kevin Rose and Alexis Ohanian’s new vision

Both leaders believe social media doesn’t need to be “winner take all”. Their shared vision aims to create a platform that cuts through modern social media’s pitfalls by becoming a social-first platform that emphasizes “connection and humanity” online. This partnership marks a transformation from their previous competitive relationship. “When Kevin told me he was buying back Digg, there was a part of me that thought, ‘Well, damn, could we do it again?'” Ohanian remarked.

AI-powered moderation and personalization

Artificial intelligence drives Digg’s revival strategy. Rose explains that AI has reached “an inflection point where it can become a helpful co-pilot to users and moderators”. 

The platform plans to implement:

  • AI-assisted content moderation to manage spam and misinformation
  • Tailored content recommendations based on user priorities
  • Tools that free moderators from “janitorial work” to focus on community building

“Online communities thrive when there’s a balance between technology and human judgment,” notes Ohanian.

What is the new Digg app?

The refreshed Digg maintains its core functionality: users share links that others can comment on and “Digg” (upvote), with popular content rising to the homepage. All the same, the “Bury” downvote option no longer exists. Justin Mezzell, Rose’s longtime collaborator with experience at Google and Facebook, will lead as CEO.

Community-first design and no follower counts

Most social platforms display follower counts, but Digg takes a different approach. This considered decision helps eliminate harmful incentives and competition. “We have to figure out how to give people respect for being really insightful, for being really encouraging, for being really funny,” Mezzell explained. The team also plans to share economic benefits with community builders and moderators once monetization begins.

Conclusion

Digg’s story represents one of the most dramatic rise-and-fall tales in internet history. A simple $5,000 experiment ended up crashing from a $160 million valuation to a tiny $500,000 sale. Digg’s downfall shows how even tech giants can collapse when they lose touch with their community’s needs and values.

Several critical mistakes created the perfect storm that led to the platform’s decline. The management team ignored user feedback during the notorious v4 redesign. The change to publisher-focused content betrayed Digg’s original mission to democratize media. Reddit managed to keep its community-first approach and became the natural home for Digg’s disappointed users.

The unexpected partnership between former competitors Kevin Rose and Alexis Ohanian opens an interesting second chapter for the once-mighty platform. The road to revival won’t be easy. Their vision tackles the exact issues that caused Digg’s original collapse. Their focus on community-driven content, AI-helped moderation, and removal of follower counts shows they’ve learned from their mistakes.

Digg’s story works as both a warning and a potential comeback tale. The success of this relaunch depends on how well Rose and Ohanian balance state-of-the-art technology with real community needs. They need to deliver on their promise to return “power to the people.” We’ll have to wait and see if Digg can reclaim its spot among social media giants or stay just another footnote in internet history.

FAQs

Q1. What was Digg and why was it significant? 

Digg was a pioneering social news website that allowed users to submit and vote on content, effectively democratizing the spread of information online. At its peak, it had millions of users and was valued at $160 million, making it a major player in the early days of social media.

Q2. What led to Digg’s downfall? 

Digg’s decline was primarily triggered by the disastrous v4 redesign in 2010, which removed popular features and prioritized publisher content over user submissions. This, combined with ignoring user feedback and failing to adapt to changing social media trends, led to a mass exodus of users to platforms like Reddit.

Q3. How did Digg compare to Reddit in their early days? 

Initially, Digg had significant advantages over Reddit, including a larger user base, more funding, and greater media attention. However, the platforms differed in their approach to content moderation, with Digg typically removing controversial content while Reddit prioritized free expression.

Q4. What are the plans for Digg’s comeback in 2024? 

Kevin Rose and Alexis Ohanian have acquired Digg with plans to relaunch it as a community-first social platform. The new Digg will feature AI-powered moderation and personalization, focus on fostering genuine connections, and notably, will not display follower counts to avoid harmful competition.

Q5. What lessons can be learned from Digg’s story? 

Digg’s rise and fall demonstrates the importance of listening to user feedback, staying true to core principles, and adapting to changing trends in social media. It also highlights how quickly a dominant platform can lose its position if it fails to prioritize its community’s needs and values.