Jody Serrano
Editor in chiefEditor in Chief at Xataka On. Before joining Webedia, I was a tech reporter at Gizmodo and The Messenger. While I've covered all sorts of things related to technology, I'm specialized in writing about social media, Internet culture, Twitch, and streamers.
Can social media today be done differently? Considering the chokehold the companies that rule the space have over the Internet, the immediate answer might be, “no.” However, there are some that believe there’s room for something else.
As such, they’ve decided to revive a dinosaur.
The return of Digg. This week, Digg founder Kevin Rose and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian announced that they would be relaunching Digg, the darling of late aughts that crashed spectacularly until it was but a shell of its former self.
Rose told The New York Times that he had bought back the site from the digital media company Money Group, though terms were not disclosed. Rose and Ohanian obtained an undisclosed amount of venture capital funding to purchase and relaunch the website, which they intend to take on Reddit. The investors include True Ventures and Seven Seven Six, venture capital firms where they both play a big role.
“This is the perfect time to revisit this idea with fresh eyes,” Rose said. Notably, he added that in the social media space today, there was room for various companies. “[W]e don’t need to take down Reddit to win.”
What was Digg, anyway? Founded in 2004, it’s been roughly 15 years since Digg fell from grace. Like Reddit, Digg was a forum that let users post and discover things they liked on the web. Users could upvote (“dig”) or downvote (“bury”) the link, which affected its positioning on Digg. It eventually turned into a constantly changing, user-generated list of things that were popular on the Internet. Individual websites got in on the game as well, adding Digg buttons to their websites so that visitors could vote them up.
The site met its end when Digg’s management implemented a redesign that users widely rejected. Facebook and Reddit were gaining steam at around the same time, which increased competition.
From enemies to partners. The fact that Rose is working with Ohanian to relaunch Digg is unexpected. Back in 2005, when Ohanian was still at Reddit, he emailed co-founder Steve Huffman a link to Digg. The subject line said the following: “Meet the enemy.”
However, 20 years is a long time, and the men had long left the companies they founded by the time they joined forces to work on Digg. They had also obtained more life experience from dabbling in other projects, such as startups and investing. Rose said that over time, he had bonded with Ohanian over the experience of running social media companies.
“The world has changed so much in the past few years,” Ohanian said. “When Kevin told me he was buying back Digg, there was a part of me that thought, ‘Well, damn, could we do it again?’”
Digg 2.0. According to Rose, he was inspired to take a second stab at Digg after he saw the Reddit protests of 2023, where hundreds of subreddits went dark in protest of changes to the site’s policies. He had also never liked the way things ended at Digg and wanted to try again.
“I look back on how that company was run, and I was just very fearful to stand up for myself in a lot of cases,” Rose said. “I just didn’t have the maturity to go out and ask the tough questions.”
The pair haven’t released many details on the new Digg or on what will make it different. As far as the vibe goes, they want Digg to “bring the fun back” to the Internet. Rose and Ohanian will also focus heavily on the people that make sites like Digg work: the moderators. Digg plans to use AI to try to ease their workloads and ensure the site remains welcoming.
Next steps. Digg won’t immediately be available to the general public, and invitations will start to go out in the next few weeks. The company’s team is made up of less than a dozen engineers and designers as well as CEO Justin Mezzell. Rose will serve as chair of Digg’s board and Ohanian will also serve on the board.
Image | Xataka On
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