Digg Returns
Digg founder Kevin Rose has teamed up with former rival Alexis Ohanian to buy the once-popular content aggregator as they bet on an artificial intelligence-powered revival of the platform that once drew around 40 million monthly visitors.
Launched in 2004 by a then 27-year-old Rose, Digg was once called the “homepage of the internet” and was a rival to Reddit, opens new tab, a firm co-founded by Ohanian.
Mike Isaac (via Hacker News):
“This is the perfect time to revisit this idea with fresh eyes,” Mr. Rose, 48, now a venture capitalist at True Ventures, said in an interview. He said social media had become so ubiquitous that “it doesn’t need to be winner take all,” adding that “we don’t need to take down Reddit to win.”
It’s an interesting move given that Reddit was a competitor who pretty much inherited that “homepage of the web” accolade. Also ‘interesting’ is the pair’s belief that most moderation can be done by AI …
[…]
The site was essentially killed by a combination of an unpopular update, widespread manipulation, and the growing popularity of Facebook – whose Like and Share buttons proved more popular. In 2012, the company was broken up and sold for parts.
Before it was acquired by Money Group, a publisher and advertising company, Digg was previously owned by BuySellAds. No word on how many people were working on the most recent version and whether any of them will continue.
Previously:
- Reddit Is Finally Profitable
- Only Google Can Crawl Reddit
- Reddit AI Training Data and IPO
- Kuro5hin, RIP
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My heart goes out to the people who worked on in-between Digg. Hopefully the internet archive has copies of their site.
Some of Yishan Wong’s thoughts on Alexis Ohanian: https://mashable.com/archive/yishan-wong-vs-alexis-ohanian
