Digg

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. Digg quickly faced competition from similar sites such as Reddit.

History

File:Screenshot of Digg.com from 2004.png

An early version of Digg.com from 2004.

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.

Digg allowed users to discover and share web content by submitting links and voting them up ("digg") or down ("bury"). The platform aggregated these votes into dynamic lists of trending content, with voting accessible both on Digg.com and through "digg" buttons embedded on external websites..

Digg underwent several updates in its early years, including the release of Digg v2 in July 2005 with a redesigned interface, friends list, and streamlined voting. In 2006, Digg v3 introduced content categories like technology, science, and entertainment, along with a "view all" section, followed by additional interface changes in 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".

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. It underwent a controversial 2010 redesign.

In 2012, Quantcast estimated Digg's monthly U.S. unique visits at 3.8 million. After 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 CompanyTemplate:'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.

In March 2025, both Rose (the original founder of Digg) along with Alexis Ohanian (co-founder of Reddit), acquired Digg and are relaunching it. Invitations to the new Digg will be distributed in the coming weeks and the site will primarily be aimed at people on mobile devices. Artificial intelligence will also play a larger part in making Digg more accessible to users, Rose said.

Then, in June of 2025, Digg is being revived by founder Kevin Rose and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian with a focus on authentic human interaction and community-building amid the rise of AI-generated content. The reboot aims to empower moderators and creators, explore technologies to verify human users, and offer a more values-aligned platform model that resists bot-driven manipulation while still responsibly using AI for tasks like moderation.

Redesign and mass exodus to Reddit

File:Digg-frontpage-feb-2008.png

Digg homepage in 2008 before the 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.

Following the redesign debacle, Digg experienced a mass exodus of users to rival site Reddit. While Digg’s traffic plummeted by a quarter in the following month, Reddit’s traffic grew by 230% in 2010. The site never recovered from the Digg v4 design and continued to languish over the next two years. By July 2012, Digg's monthly unique visitor count had fallen 90 percent from its peak.

Betaworks era, 2012-2018

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 PostTemplate:'s Code3 project for $12 million;
3. the patent portfolio was sold to LinkedIn for approximately $4 million.

On July 20, 2012, new owners Betaworks announced via Twitter that they were rebuilding Digg from scratch, "turning [Digg] 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.

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.

BuySellAds/Money Group era, 2018-2025

In April 2018, ad-tech company BuySellAds bought Digg's assets, as well as its editorial and revenue teams, for an undisclosed amount with Todd Garland becoming CEO of the company.

During the BuySellAds era, Digg was kept as an editorially curated homepage in the mold of the Betaworks version, staffed with an editorial team of five responsible for the day-to-day content, producing 150 to 200 posts per day, with 12 of them curated into a daily email. "We sought out people who (were) in tune with the heartbeat of the internet and are familiar with how content bubbles up and becomes viral. While Digg's purpose isn't necessarily to showcase all the viral content of the web, we try to find the things that are most interesting that should get more attention." explained Garland.

Digg was later acquired by Money Group for an undisclosed amount.

Rose-Ohanian era, 2025-

In March 2025, it was announced that Digg founder Rose and Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian bought the website back for an undisclosed amount. Justin Mezzell was named the new CEO of Digg. The site will primarily be aimed at people on mobile devices. The new Digg will use a combination of AI tools and humans for content moderation.

In April 2025, an early access community called Groundbreakers was opened with a $5 sign-up fee, capped at 23,000 signups. Groundbreakers hit their maximum capacity on April 21st, 2025. Groundbreaker members were promised "updates, mockups, and experiments" and a "front-row seat to how Digg is being rebuilt." Users who joined Groundbreakers reserved their username and will receive a badge on the new platform.

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:

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

Timeline of Digg history

Date	Event
October 2004	Development on digg.com begins
December 1, 2004	Kevin Rose creates the first profile
December 3, 2004	The first story is submitted to Digg
December 5, 2004	Digg is open to public
December 13, 2004	Kevin Rose shows off Digg on The Screen Savers
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
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
January 17, 2006	Top user Albertpacino resigns after accusations of him being on Digg payroll
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
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
February 2, 2007	Big Spy launched
February 26, 2007	The new US elections 2008 section creates much 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 yield to 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.
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
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
March 18, 2011	Kevin Rose resigns from his role in the company
August 9, 2011	Newswire is launched.
September 20, 2011	Newsroom is launched
December 22, 2011	Digg Social Reader is introduced.
March 6, 2012	Digg Mobile is now in a relationship with Digg Social Reader.
July 12, 2012	Digg announced its sale to Betaworks for $500,000.
July 20, 2012	Digg announces new site redesign in progress, "rebooting" the site back to v1 as a "startup", slated for release on August 1, 2012.
August 1, 2012	Digg releases v1 site reboot
June 28, 2013	Digg Reader launches
March 17, 2017	Michael O'Connor replaces Gary Liu as the CEO of Digg.
March 14, 2018	Digg announces Digg Reader is shutting down.
April 25, 2018	Digg is bought by Boston-based ad-tech company BuySellAds.
March 5, 2025	Kevin Rose and Alexis Ohanian announce they have purchased Digg, and will "revive" the platform with a "fresh vision to restore the spirit of discovery and genuine community that made the early web a fun and exciting place to be."

See also

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