The past explosions include: Digg, one of the web’s early news aggregators, has returned to ownership of original founder Kevin Rose. In particular, he is joined by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian (both above).
Digg and Reddit were once fierce rivals in the online social news aggregation space, and were released within a year 20 years ago. The two platforms enjoyed similar trajectories over the years between them, passing through different owners and spinoffs. However, Reddit’s endurance has been particularly noticeable, with users continuing to grow as it was finally revealed last year with a bumper IPO.
Digg didn’t hold back the trials of time very well for that part. The company was split into parts in 2012 and sold to Incubator Betaworks, with some assets acquired by LinkedIn and Washington Post. Digg later raised strategic funding from USA Today’s owner Gannett before entering the hands of digital advertising firm Buysellads, which acquired a majority stake in 2018.
“Fresh vision”
Digg never soared to the same height as Reddit. So Rose and Ohanian are now working together to “revive” the platform with a spirit of discovery that has made the early web a fun and exciting place and a fresh vision to restore the authentic community.
Rose says that he has been approached at various times over the years to buy Digg, but it didn’t feel like the right time. Recently, he heard it was for sale, he told TechCrunch and began calling friends to brainstorm about it. One of these was EV Williams, co-founder of both Twitter and Publishing Platform Medium. The other is an Ohanian, who once considered his enemy as an enemy, and in recent years he has grown closer than he has in recent years.
Rose in her first conversation with Ohanian states of Digg: And we started a bit of a refill and I noticed that there were lots of things on the cutting room floor by his side – what he never built [and] What he wanted to see and the same applies to me. ”
So why now? According to Rose, it’s a combination of reasons. Rose says the existing social media situation has become toxic and messy and is plagued by misinformation. “Only “things out of the box” is “crazy,” Rose observes, “There’s a Google endpoint that doesn’t even have to ruin your model at all, you can get a response time of 200 milliseconds with comments of less than about 300 characters, and you can get a speech of violence, hate across vectors of over 20 different vectors. For example, it wasn’t possible five years ago.”
More broadly, Rose states: And when you think about these big changes, they need to go and take a step back and revisit the first principles and think about how you might change [a business] From scratch, that’s what Alexis, me and Justin are [Mezzell]a longtime collaborator for Rose, and is now the CEO of Digg, he said.
Ohanian reflects Rose’s sentiment in a press release about the new Digg. “When there’s a balance between technology and human judgment, online communities thrive,” he said. “We’re getting Digg back to make sure there’s balance there. Kevin and I are here to build something better than what social platforms offer today. AI needs to handle the grunt work in the background, but humans focus on what they’re doing their best. They build real connections.”
Ohanian is coming and going to reddit over time by his side. He first left the company in 2009, returned to chairman in 2014, then resigned from the board in 2020.
Both Rose and Ohanian have invested in other companies over the years, both individually and institutional funding. Just this week, Ohanian joined Frank McCourt’s bid to buy Tiktok’s US business.
Their parallel paths as investors are now converging with Rose as general partners and Ohanian venture Seven Seven Six, both investing in Digg.
While veteran product designer Mezzell leads the company’s day-to-day operations, Rose serves as Digg’s chairman and advisor, while Ohanian sits on the board.
A new version of the DIGG platform will be released soon. The invitation will unfold in the coming weeks. In the meantime, Rose has a landing page that allows people to enter emails.
“Then there is the first cam that was served first. [system] About username picking and its nature,” says Rose. “We’re not spammers,” he continues. “We’re not going to sign up for crazy weekly digests or some s. If you just go over there and enter your credentials (email), let us know when it’s live, grab your username, kick the tires and tell us where we’re ruining them.
Still, Rose says, don’t expect too straightforward. Turnaround takes time.
“When we actually go, from this year, a year, half, it’s going to be very similar to the leap that happened to Figma. “It’s not your old fashioned forum.”
You can hear much longer conversations with Rose about Digg, his relationship with the Ohanians, as well as the important lessons he learned as a founder, and much longer conversations on podcasts about big news.
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