It’s been a difficult couple of months for Digg. The crowdsourced news site pushed out a major new design at the end of August which met with a lot of criticism and broken axles. There was literally a user revolt and things deteriorated so rapidly that earlier this week the company had to let go more than a third of its employees.
How bad did it get? Here’s one data point from comScore: Digg… → Read More
Digg just can’t get a break. On the heels of news that the company had to lay off 37% of its staff and saw the departures of both its CRO and CFO, last night a report surfaced alleging that Digg was gaming its own system, ostensibly to favor certain partners. If true, this would have further undermined user trust in the site’s democratic voting system, and the evidence was convincing that… → Read More
This morning most of us woke up to the disappointing news that social news site Digg, once a promising destination for Silicon Valley talent, was losing 37% of its staff as well experiencing key executive departures.
While the usual armchair Twitter quarterbacks responded to the what the layoffs mean for the ailing site, another more positive trend was also evidenced; People making clear that… → Read More
More bad news for Digg. Earlier today we broke the news that Digg was having a large wave of layoffs that cut 37% its staff, which came alongside the exit of Chief Revenue Officer Chas Edwards. We’ve just confirmed that Digg has also seen another departure from its executive team: Chief Financial Officer John Moffett recently left the company.
Moffett wasn’t a recently appointed executive hire… → Read More
On stage at FailCon today, Jay Adelson went over his storied career from Equinix to Digg. Adelson kept emphasizing the fact that he had no regrets despite Digg having failed to pin down acquisition offers from both Current and Google, while the news broke during the panel that Digg had just laid off 37% of its staff.
I asked Adelson while he was onstage whether he wanted to revaluate his “no… → Read More
After incredible user backlash a recent poll on whether Digg should bring back the controversial “Bury” button, DIgg CEO Matthew Williams today confirmed that the social news aggregator would be bringing back many of the beloved Digg Version 3 features.
“Recently, we’ve been reinstating a number of the features that many of you loved about Digg. In the past two weeks we’ve brought back the… → Read More
It looks like Digg is trying to resurrect inactive users, according to an email sent to us by a reader. Apparently Digg sent out the email to users in hopes of trying to get those who are inactive back to the site. As the email states, “Come Alive On Digg. A Lot Has Changed Since You Were Last On Digg. Resurrect Yourself.”
It could be a joke alluding to Halloween, which is just around the corner. → Read More
Digg founder Kevin Rose just tweeted out a poll regarding the controversial Digg “Bury” feature, which was taken off the site in the latest Version 4 redesign reportedly due to issues with “Bury Brigades” or people organizing in order to game the site and force certain stories off the homepage.
So far about 1000 people have taken the poll via Twitter (we’re assuming anyone who would take a Kevin… → Read More
There were two surreal moments for me at Disrupt last week. The first was during the SV Angels Party when Hammer was dancing. It wasn’t just because MC-Freaking-Hammer was doing the Hammer dance in a tux and nerd glasses in front of me. It was because the CEO and founder of the media company I work for were on stage looking awkward and white, but dancing none the less. It was because… → Read More
This is going to come as a shock to you: But suddenly and for the first time in years, I really care about the future of AOL. And, because I used to host a show on Yahoo Finance, the story floating around about whether or not these two has-beens of the Internet (sorry, new overlords) would be better together has special resonance with me.
I don’t totally agree with Henry Blodget when he says that… → Read More
We sat down with Digg co-founder Kevin Rose after TechCrunch Disrupt yesterday to talk about the recent Digg Version 4 launch and the user revolt and media circus that ensued. Rose addressed the lessons he had learned during the tumultuous redesign, including what he would have done differently if given another opportunity.
Rose, who was recently replaced as CEO by Matt Williams, also went in to… → Read More
Apparently some of Digg’s employees aren’t super happy that their main source of news about Digg is TechCrunch – probably referring to the news that VP of Engineering John Quinn is out.
Digg Designer Danny Trinh Twitters “I love finding out about @digg company news via @techcrunch. Wonder if they’ll post our lunch menu too..”
Yes, we will. → Read More
Ever since Digg launched its new site design, it’s been plagued with all kinds of trouble, not least of which is that it keeps going down. The problems with the new architecture are so bad that VP of Engineering John Quinn is now gone, we’ve confirmed with sources close to Digg.
In a Diggnation video today, CEO Kevin Rose explained some of the technical issues the site is dealing with and why it… → Read More
Digg founder Kevin Rose cheerfully responds to the mountains of criticism around the newly launched Digg 4. His overall theme is that users need to deal with it.
Rose says that he’s “gotta take risk” with the service in his quest to push it beyond the 30 million or so monthly visitors to the masses. He wants 20,000 – 30,000 diggs on the top stories v. the few hundred diggs that most top stories… → Read More
It’s all hands on deck at Reddit this week.
In the wake of Digg’s bungled redesign, its rival is enjoying a surge in traffic and a jump in ad and subscription sales. Since Monday, the site has been averaging 900,000 uniques per day— a 50% increase from Reddit’s pre-”Digg 4″ average, according to senior programmer, Chris Slowe. The six-member team does not openly celebrate the technical woes of… → Read More
Digg has hired Amazon exec Matt Williams to be their new CEO, we’ve confirmed. This ends a months-long process that began with the ouster of former CEO Jay Adelson in April. Founder Kevin Rose has run the company since then.
Williams has been with Amazon for more than a decade – since 1999. He is currently the GM of Consumer Payments. But he has held a variety of jobs – GM Webstore, Director Tech… → Read More
“Digg v4 is not a redesign, not a reskin, it is a 100% rewrite. It’s completely new design, code, architecture, and infrastructure. It has almost no relationship to the v3 system whatsoever.”
Social news site Digg is currently in the particularly bloody throes of its fifth user revolt, and unlike revolts one through four, we’ve heard that Digg is absolutely positively not capitulating to users… → Read More
The news page on Digg, and particularly the Technology category, is currently plastered with links to discussions and images posted on rival Reddit instead. That’ll bring Reddit some traffic this morning, but more importantly it’s a bit of an embarrassing situation for Digg.
The Next Web speculates that Reddit is ‘gaming’ Digg, but there seems to be something else at play here, namely Digg users… → Read More
Today on their blog, URL shortening service Bit.ly unveiled a cute new feature: Clickabit. It’s a Twitter account that surfaces some of the “surprising and bizarre” links being shortened and shared across their network. But the feature also hints at something we’ve been talking about for a while: Bit.ly Now.
“We’re currently hard at work on several systems that will expose some of the… → Read More
If you’ve been on the new Digg at all in the past day or so you’re probably already familiar with the above “Fail Ox” image, especially if you’re trying to use Digg search. The image is new, and is the result of Digg designer Tyson Rosage’s obsession with The Oregon Trail, you know the old school computer game.
Founder Kevin Rose told TechCrunch and Twitter last night that Digg experienced over 1… → Read More
The new Digg is here and clearly it is in your best interests to follow us on it. You can do that by going here and I guess following us. You can also follow us on Twitter and you can follow us home and we’ll keep you like a lost puppy. Whatever floats your boat. We’re just trying to keep current. → Read More
Digg Head of Business Development Matt Van Horn is leaving Digg to move over to the “stealthish” startup Path as VP of Business Development. This Friday will be his last day at Digg, which just this week announced its V.4 redesign.
From Van Horn’s announcement email to colleagues:
When I graduated college in 2006, it was a crazy dream to move to the bay area and join a tech start-up. So I took it… → Read More
It’s finally here. Digg, the social link sharing site that has watched its once-meteoric rise to popularity level off over the last couple years, is relaunching today as it attempts to surge to greater heights — with an added focus on making the site better for publishers as well as users. Digg v4 will be rolling out over the next few hours, and brings some major changes that could totally… → Read More
In case you haven’t heard, there’s a new version of Digg which is on the verge of launching. Beta invites for it are so sought-after that even Bill Cosby had to personally ask founder Kevin Rose for one on Twitter the other day. Thankfully, he got his invite. But for those of you who aren’t stars of one of the most popular sitcoms of all time, we have some good news for you too: we have invites. A… → Read More
Comedian Bill Cosby of New Coke and Jello Pudding Pop endorsing fame is totally excited for the new Digg 4, so much so that he can’t wait a few of weeks for its upcoming launch and needs an alpha invite like NOW.
Cosby, who has been in the news recently for some interesting opinions on race, also could use the Digg founder’s help with his new iPhone app, Bill Cosby for the iPhone. → Read More
Former Digg biz dev head Bob Buch will as of Monday take on a new role as AOL’s VP of Business Development. Buch will joining Digg’s former Chief Strategy Officer Mike Maser, former Marketing Manager Aubrey Sabala, and former Head of Communications Kiersten Hollars, who all made the switch over to AOL.
Buch will be part of a team helmed by former Google Managing Counsel and current AOL Senior… → Read More
There’s always been a form of healthy rivalry between Reddit and Digg, and its respective user bases. I’m one of those indifferent people who think there’s plenty of room for multiple sites of the kind, and that these sites actually make each other stronger and better in their state of co-existence. Rising tide lifting all boats and all that.
Nevertheless, I was keen on sharing an email from… → Read More
Digg founder Kevin Rose, after confirming that he’s leaving Diggnation at the end of this year, is now announcing his new show. It’s fforward – pronounced “forward” – and you can sign up to be notified of the launch now.
The new show will be launching in a couple of months, Kevin tells me, “as a weekly live streaming tech/geek culture show.” Rose says he’ll be the primary host of fforward, but… → Read More
Digg founder and CEO Kevin Rose will be leaving his popular Diggnation show, we’ve heard from a source. This has not been confirmed by Kevin, but we believe it’s accurate. Revision3, which hosts the show, has not yet returned our request for comment.
The show has been “aired” since July 1, 2005 and regularly attracts 200,000 or more viewers. It is the most popular show on Revision3, although new… → Read More
OExchange, a simple specification for URL-based content sharing on the Web, was introduced today by a number of online service providers and social networks. The open link-sharing protocol has gained support from Google, Microsoft, LinkedIn, Digg, Instapaper, StumbleUpon, Clearspring Technologies and a handful more.
So what’s it all about?
OExchange essentially establishes a common way for… → Read More
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