Once the “Top Website,” Digg is Making a Comeback
Digg’s founder, Kevin Rose, has teamed up with Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit and his former competitor, to buy back the once-popular social platform, Digg, and they plan to use AI to restore its former glory.
Digg was once hailed as the “homepage of the internet”: anyone could post a link and influence its visibility by using “dig” (similar to PTT’s “upvote”) or “bury” (similar to PTT’s “downvote”). At its peak, it attracted 40 million visitors per month.
In just 18 months, founder Kevin Rose generated $60 million in revenue. However, as social media platforms rose to prominence, Digg’s traffic began to plummet. In 2012, after being acquired by the New York-based tech incubator Betaworks, Digg faded from the scene, with its most valuable patents being bought by LinkedIn, a subsidiary of Microsoft.
Kevin Rose’s “comeback” is mainly driven by the development of AI technology. Rose and Ohanian state that they will use AI to combat misinformation and harmful speech. The new version of Digg is set to launch in the coming weeks, aiming to make a reappearance in the competitive social media market.
Why Did Digg Fail, Once Considered the “First Stop on the Internet”?
In 2004, at the age of 27, Kevin Rose founded Digg, quickly becoming an internet celebrity.
The main reason for its success was Digg’s “user voting” model, which revolutionized how people used the internet. It can be said that it laid the foundation for the interactive styles of many forums and social media platforms today—whether it’s the well-known Taiwanese PTT, Dcard, “American PTT” Reddit, or Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, all of them feature a “like” mechanism.
However, the rise of social media platforms contributed to Digg’s decline in market share. Platforms like Facebook and Twitter, in addition to “liking,” also offer functions like comments and shares, which not only increased interactivity but also made information consumption easier. More importantly, there were no “downvotes.” In 2010, Digg conducted a wide-ranging censorship campaign against certain users and released a new version that removed the voting page, which became a flashpoint for user backlash.
Another challenge came from a very similar product: Reddit. In January 2010, Digg had 29.1 million monthly visitors, but by May 2012, that number had dropped to just 7.3 million. Meanwhile, Reddit, a very similar product, grew quietly from 1.7 million monthly visitors in January 2010 to 9.2 million by May of that year, eventually surpassing Digg in December 2012.
Why did these two similar products have such different fates? Reddit co-founder Steve Huffman, in an interview with MIT Technology Review, said that Digg’s user loyalty may never have been strong, and the inability to “directly interact” and the removal of its core features were key factors in users moving to other platforms.
“But we always focused on our core philosophy and evolved with the times, which helped us retain early users. That was crucial,” Steve Huffman said, adding, “So I wouldn’t say Reddit killed Digg.” Implicitly, he suggested that Digg’s problems may have been more internal.
Kevin Rose did not make any defenses, and in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, he openly admitted his mistakes, including reacting too slowly to the market and rushing updates, which allowed emerging social media platforms and competitors to surpass Digg.
Still Controlling Speech! Digg Aims to Recreate the Nostalgic Community Atmosphere with “AI + Moderators”
However, there is no permanent winner, and Kevin Rose believes there is still hope. Currently, the prevailing issue in social media is the abundance of “toxic and harmful” content over healthy interactions. Problems like misinformation, online violence, and fake accounts make using social media less enjoyable. Meta and other companies have recently announced the cancellation of their fact-checking programs on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, which could worsen the situation.
Kevin Rose’s idea is to use AI to filter out spam and harmful content, allowing platform moderators to focus on fostering positive interactions within the community. Though somewhat ironic, as Digg’s failure stemmed from censoring users’ speech, Rose believes that times have changed, and AI capabilities are much better now. Interestingly, this is also why he is willing to partner with his former competitor, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian.
Reddit’s AI Strategy
Reddit has been strategically developing AI since 2022, when it acquired Swedish content moderation startup Oterlu. In 2024, it announced a partnership with OpenAI to train and develop its own conversational summary interface, “Reddit Answers,” showcasing Reddit’s ambition in AI development.
Kevin Rose and Alexis Ohanian envision using AI to filter spam and remove harmful content, allowing human moderators to focus on promoting positive interactions within the community, thus maximizing the role of “moderators.” Alexis Ohanian stated that, based on Reddit’s experience, moderators are key to setting the tone for discussions and ensuring that conversations do not go off-track. With the assistance of AI, it will be easier to enforce community guidelines.
Will the relaunch of Digg be just a nostalgic trip down memory lane for the social media era of the past, or will it be a surprising revival? We will have to wait and see.
Sources: Reuters, MIT Technology Review, WSJ, ZDNET, The Verge
This draft was written by AI.