Digg is a
social news website. Prior to Digg v4, its cornerstone function consisted of letting people vote stories up or down, called
digging and
burying, respectively. Digg's popularity prompted the creation of copycat
social networking sites with story submission and voting systems.
[6] The website traffic ranked 190th, behind one of those competitors,
Reddit, by
Alexa.com as of December 5, 2011.
[5] Quantcast estimates Digg's monthly U.S. unique visits at 4.3 million.
History and description
Digg started out as an experiment in November 2004 by
Kevin Rose, Owen Byrne, Ron Gorodetzky, and
Jay Adelson. The original design was free of advertisements, and was designed by
Dan Ries. As Digg became more popular, Google
AdSense
was added to the website. In July 2005, the site was updated to Version
2.0. The new version featured a friends list, the ability to "digg" a
story without being redirected to a success page, and a new interface
designed by web design company silverorange.
[8]
The site developers have stated that in future versions a more
minimalist design will likely be employed. On Monday June 26, 2006
version 3 of Digg was released with specific categories for Technology,
Science, World & Business, Videos, Entertainment and Gaming as well
as a View All section where all categories are merged. Digg has grown
large enough that submissions sometimes create a sudden increase of
traffic to the "dugg" website. This is referred to by some Digg users as
the "
Digg effect"
and by some others as the site being "dugg to death." However, in many
cases stories are linked simultaneously on several popular bookmarking
sites. In such cases, the impact of the "digg effect" is difficult to
isolate and assess. On August 27, 2007, Digg altered its main interface,
mostly in the profile area. The domain "digg.com" attracted at least
236 million visitors annually by 2008 according to a
Compete.com survey.
[9]
Digg CEO Jay Adelson explained at the 2010 "Bigg Digg Shindigg,"
which is part of the South by Southwest Interactive Conference, that
Digg is getting a major overhaul and redesign.
[10]
In an interview with Wired magazine, Adelson explained that "Every
single thing has changed" and that "the entire website has been
rewritten."
[11]
Adelson explains that the new Digg will essentially eliminate the
duplication problem. It will also help prevent so called 'power users'
from dominating the site with their submissions. The new Digg will also
offer users a personalized homepage, based on their diggs, that is
tailored to their specific interests. The commenting system will be
updated to "help fight bad behavior like trolling or group-burying." The
entire look of the site will also change. 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." John Quinn wrote in a
Digg blog post that the company was going to stop using
MySQL and begin using
Cassandra, a distributed database system.
[12]
On April 5, 2010, Kevin Rose announced that he would be assuming the position of CEO as Jay Adelson had stepped down.
[13]
Although, some time later he has disclosed that he is actively seeking a
replacement CEO as the role takes up too much of his time that he would
rather spend doing other things, such as
angel investing.
On August 25, 2010, Digg released v4. The site experienced a number
of bugs and glitches that resulted in a backlash from Digg users in the
form of verbal opposition and, initially, heavy posting of articles from
Reddit - a competitor of Digg's. Digg's business development director Matt Van Horn left Digg after the official update of version 4.
[14]
On September 1, 2010, Matt Williams took over as CEO, ending Rose's troubled tenure as interim chief executive.
Potential sale
Several reports have come forward claiming Digg has been trying to sell itself to a larger company since early 2006.
[15]
While Adelson claims that Digg will meet with any potential buyers, he
denies that they will actively begin talks for a sale. The most recent
sale talks were with Google in July 2008 for approximately $200 million.
On July 25, during the
due diligence part of the potential sale, Google informed Digg that they were not interested in the purchase.
[16] As a result of
Google's decision, Digg entered into a third round of funding, receiving $28.7 million from
investors such as
Highland Capital Partners.
[17] With this funding, the company plans to move from their current offices to accommodate a bigger staff base.
[18] On December 2, 2008,
BusinessWeek
reported "Digg Chief Executive Officer Jay Adelson says the popular
news aggregation Web site is no longer for sale, and the focus of the
company is to build an independent business that reaches profitability
as quickly as possible. That means the four-year-old startup will dial
back some of its expansion plans, instead prioritizing projects that
generate revenue and profit."
[19] On December 18, 2008,
BusinessWeek
analyzed Digg's financial statements. They reported that Digg lost $4
million on $6.4 million of revenue in the first three quarters of 2008.
[4]
Features
Facebook Connect
In May 2009, Digg launched a new feature integrating
Facebook Connect with Digg.
[20]
The Digg integration with Facebook connect allows users of Digg and
Facebook to connect their accounts. When a Facebook account is connected
to a Digg account, Digg articles can then be shared on the user's
Facebook page.
[21]
Facebook Connect also allows Facebook users to log into Digg with their
Facebook account, thus bypassing the normally required Digg
registration.
Digg Dialogg
Digg Dialogg allows Digg users to submit questions to a preselected
famous individual who agrees to do an interview with a reporter chosen
by Digg.
[22]
Digg Bar
On April 2, 2009, Digg released the Digg Bar, which provides a
toolbar above the top of a site allowing the user to produce shortened
urls, or access digg comments and analytics without leaving the page.
[23]
On April 5, 2010, Kevin Rose announced on the official Digg blog that
the controversial DiggBar would be eliminated with the implementation of
the 4th version of the website.
[24] This was Rose's first major announcement since succeeding Jay Adelson as CEO.
Digg API
On April 19, 2007, Digg opened their API
[25] (Application Programing Interface) to the public.
[26]
This allowed software developers to write tools and applications based
on queries of Digg's public data, dating back to 2004. Since then, many
blogs
[27][28] have sought to keep up with all of the ongoing Digg API projects.
Criticism
Mob mentality
Unlike the present Digg algorithm, which works on user diversity, in
2006 it was much more dependent on flocking behavior among users to
determine the promotion of content. During this period an anonymous user
posted a blog accusing an O'Reilly writer of stealing Digg's CSS.
[29]
The Digg mob flocked to the story and it was promoted with nearly 3,000
votes. Digg founders Kevin Rose, Jay Adelson and Daniel Burka expressed
dissatisfaction on finding Digg's code on Mallett's sites.
[30]
Mallett responded and clarified that the unauthorized use of code was
committed by the contributors to the open source Digg clone,
Pligg, which he was using.
[31] Kevin acknowledged the misunderstanding and notified Pligg developers of the issue.
[32]
Adelson contacted Mallett thanking him for clearing the issue and
expressed support for his claims. Another O'Reilly blogger in defense of
Mallett posted a criticism of Digg's
mob mentality.
[33] Digg mob's failure to the Mallett story has also been attributed to
groupthink which is different from the wisdom of the crowds which requires independence among the nodes.
[34]
Moderation and algorithms
The purpose of Digg was to give editorial powers back to the masses.
However, the second version of Digg began using a secret algorithm that
blurs the transparency that was expected by the users. In 2006, the site
began to be gamed by their top users.
[35] Supernova17 was banned after agreeing to promote a story for cash to an undercover Digg sting operation.
[36] Another group of users openly formed a niche 'bury brigade' .
[37]
The users defended themselves claiming their actions were in accordance
with the wishes of Digg users. Digg tried to offset criticism by hiring
computer scientist Anton Kast to develop a diversity algorithm to
prevent special interest groups from dominating Digg. A townhall was
organized and the users demanded the shouts feature be discontinued.
[38] By 2008,
Google
increased their page rank for Digg and many 'pay for Diggs' startups
were created to profit from the opportunity. According to a popular blog
a single front-page story was sold for $500 at that time.
[39]
Usocial and Diggfront were given cease and desist notices from Digg
which they ignored. After the release of Digg v4, there had been more
questions with the algorithm.
[40]
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.
[41] 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.
[42] Although some users defended Digg's actions,
[43][44][45] as a whole the community staged a widespread revolt with numerous articles and comments being made using the encryption key.
[46][47] The scope of the user response was so great that one of the Digg users referred to it as a "digital
Boston Tea Party".
[48]
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."
[49]
Organized ideologically motivated censorship
Main article:
Digg Patriots
On August 5, 2010, progressive blogger
Ole Ole Olson (aka "Novenator") posted a report to
AlterNet about a year-long effort of organized burying of seemingly liberal articles from the Upcoming module of Digg by a conservative
Yahoo! Groups mailing list known as
DiggPatriots and an associated page on
coRank;
he also accused leading members of the mailing list of participating in
behavior which violated the Digg Terms of Usage, such as creating
"sleeper" accounts in the event of administrators banning their main
accounts for terms-violating behavior as well as vexatious "reporting"
of seemingly liberal users for banning.
[50][51]
The post was immediately followed by the disbanding and closure of the
DiggPatriots list, and an investigation into the matter by Digg.
[52]
Digg v4
On August 25, 2010, when Digg updated to version 4, the site was
unreachable or unstable during the launch day and the weeks following. A
large number of the site's members have complained about the new design
and removed features (such as bury, favorites, friends submissions,
upcoming pages, subcategories, and history search).
[53] Kevin Rose replied to complaints on his blog where he promised to restore upcoming pages and fix the algorithm.
[54]
In an open letter to Rose, Alexis Ohanian, founder of rival site
Reddit, said :
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."
[55]
Ian Eure, former Digg engineer, explained on his blog why the update
cannot be reverted, but the old features can still be ported to the new
architecture.
[56]
Disgruntled Digg users declared August 30, 2010 as the 'quit Digg
day' and began digging up stories submitted by Reddit's auto submitting
publisher account filling up the front page.
[57][58][59] Reddit also temporarily added the Digg shovel to their logo to welcome fleeing Digg users.
[60]
Digg's traffic dropped significantly after the launch of version 4,
[61] and publishers reported a drop in direct referrals from stories on Digg's front page.
[62]
Recently hired 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. Digg banned RSS
Submissions. Digg said "The simple act of forcing a manual submission
helps to combat spam and ensures that quality content appears on Digg."
[63][64]
Timeline
| October 2004 |
Development on digg.com begins[65] |
| December 1, 2004 |
Kevin Rose creates the first profile |
| December 3, 2004 |
The first story is submitted to Digg[66] |
| December 5, 2004 |
Digg is open to public |
| December 13, 2004 |
Kevin Rose shows off Digg on The Screen Savers[67] |
| January 2, 2005 |
Comment section introduced for stories |
| February 28, 2005 |
Digg 1.6: duplicate story detection |
| March 19, 2005 |
Profile page now includes comment histories and sort by category |
| May 9, 2005 |
Digg spy is released |
| May 27, 2005 |
Digg 2.0 is released. Friends feature, ajax buttons for Digg/bury, and a non-linear promotion algorithm are implemented. |
| July 2, 2005 |
Diggnation podcast begins with Alex and Kevin[68] |
| October 2005 |
Raises $2.8 million in venture capital |
| December 2005 |
Digg Spy 2.0 released |
| December 2005 |
KoolAidGuy saga results in anti-spam tools being introduced[69] |
| January 17, 2006 |
Top user Albertpacino resigns after accusations of him being on Digg payroll[70] |
| January 18, 2006 |
Digg Clouds is introduced, Search is improved |
| January 25, 2006 |
Acquisition rumors begins |
| February 2, 2006 |
Report stories as 'inaccurate' and Profanity filters are introduced |
| February 15, 2006 |
Digg widget for blogs and share by email is released |
| March 1, 2006 |
New Digg Comment System Released, threaded and Diggable comments. |
| April 20, 2006 |
Digg Army Saga: after an exposé by forevergeek.com Kevin bans dozens of top users.[71] |
| June 26, 2006 |
Digg v3 rolled out, site redesign, shouts, new categories: politics and sports. |
| July 24, 2006 |
Digg Labs Launches |
| August 15, 2006 |
Thumbnails added |
| August 27, 2006 |
Digg begins enforcing trademark rights |
| September 6, 2006 |
User rebellion against Friends System and vote rigging results in
promises about the diversity algorithms and other tools that were never
implemented. Top user p9 resigns. |
| September 8, 2006 |
diggriver.com is launched for mobile devices |
| September 12, 2006 |
#1 Story feature added later renamed as favorites |
| December 18, 2006 |
New features: Podcast, Videos, Top 10 sidebar, wide-screen support and friends page |
| December 28, 2006 |
Raises $8.5 million in venture capital |
| February 2, 2007 |
Top Diggers list removed after user complaints[72] |
| February 2, 2007 |
Big Spy Launched |
| February 26, 2007 |
The new US Elections 2008 section creates lots of buzz |
| March 1, 2007 |
Blog post leads to concern about 'bury brigades'. Digg investigates and find no evidence for these allegations |
| April 19, 2007 |
Digg API is made public, Contest launched for best app using the API |
| May 1, 2007 |
HD-DVD saga regarding the censorship of the leaked encryption key, Kevin sides with the users and ends the censorship |
| June 4, 2007 |
Facebook app is launched |
| June 21, 2007 |
New Comment System - Joe Stump edition. Instant backlash from community after slow loading. |
| July 10, 2007 |
iPhone App beta launched |
| July 25, 2007 |
Ad partnership with Microsoft |
| August 27, 2007 |
Customizable homepage options. Images and videos now back to homepage. |
| September 19, 2007 |
New Digg profiles, story suggestion, email alerts |
| November 20, 2007 |
Digg the Candidates: Presidential candidates get their Digg accounts |
| February 1, 2008 |
Digg Town Halls |
| May 15, 2008 |
New comments system is released |
| June 30, 2008 |
Recommendation engine is released |
| July 23, 2008 |
Facebook minifeeds of digg stories |
| July 31, 2008 |
m.digg.com - Mobile site is released |
| August 6, 2008 |
Firefox Extension released |
| August 25, 2008 |
Digg Dialogg |
| September 8, 2008 |
Digg warns users against script for auto digging friends stories. |
| September 24, 2008 |
$28.7 million capital raised with Highland Capital Partners. |
| October 3, 2008 |
A small number of power users are banned after they fail to follow guidelines against script digging.[73] |
| October 9, 2008 |
Digg Spy and podcasts discontinued |
| December 18, 2008 |
Related stories and "People who Dugg this also Dugg" boxes added to individual stories |
| April 2, 2009 |
DiggBar and short url launched |
| April 9, 2009 |
New Search |
| May 6, 2009 |
Facebook Connect |
| May 26, 2009 |
Shouts feature is removed |
| August 6, 2009 |
Diggable ads implemented |
| October 16, 2009 |
Partners with WeFollow for categorizing user in the upcoming version 4 release |
| November 4, 2009 |
Digg Trends launched |
| January 17, 2010 |
Chrome extension launched |
| March 23, 2010 |
iPhone app is launched |
| April 1, 2010 |
Android app is launched |
| April 5, 2010 |
Jay Adelson Steps Down as CEO, Kevin Rose becomes interim CEO |
| July 2, 2010 |
Digg version 4 alpha testing begins |
| August 3, 2010 |
Digg takes down new user registration in preparation for Digg 4.0[74] |
| August 25, 2010 |
Digg v4 is released: My News and Publisher Streams launched |
| September 1, 2010 |
Matt Williams replaces Kevin Rose as CEO |
| October 27, 2010 |
Digg lays off 37% of its staff along with refocusing the service[75] |
| March 18, 2011 |
Kevin Rose resigns from his role in the company [76] |
| August 9, 2011 |
Newswire is launched. |
| September 20, 2011 |
Newsroom is launched. |
