Two years ago today, after about $2,000 in development costs, Kevin Rose launched Digg and changed the way millions of people consume online news.

The guy that built the original Digg prototype, Owen Byrne, wrote a post on the Digg blog today to mark the birthday. He also includes some great trivia about the site:

Hard to believe, but two years ago today, Kevin decided my code was bug- free enough to take down the beta sign and unleash Digg upon the world. It’s been a crazy and exciting time since then, and we owe it all to you – the loyal and passionate members of the Digg community.

To those of you who have spent countless hours finding the coolest and timeliest content on the Internet, I and the entire Digg team would like to personally thank you for your contributions and loyalty.

Some trivia –

* First story to hit the home page after officially releasing: http://digg.com/tech_news/Google_Cheat_Sheet

* # of users who registered in the first week: 578
* # of registered users today: 707,593

* First 10 users who registered and are still actively Digging:

http://digg.com/users/Waldoze

http://digg.com/users/drinet

http://digg.com/users/mkirk

http://digg.com/users/jkenzer

http://digg.com/users/nickster

http://digg.com/users/Anthony

http://digg.com/users/dkurfurst

http://digg.com/users/bnitro

http://digg.com/users/CUBApete

http://digg.com/users/martinhuard

* # of servers Digg had at launch: 1 (rented)
* # of servers Digg has today: 103

* # of stories submitted the first week: 923
* # of stories submitted last week: 15,412
* # of stories submitted (all-time): 1,001,865

Congratulations to the Digg team. And to their investors, who are going to make a boatload of money. Our extended coverage of Digg is here, and an interview with the founders is here.

The cool logo is care of Go2Web2.