For a mates of years, location was thing connected the net truthful simultaneously thrilling and terrifying arsenic having your website deed the beforehand page of Digg. Thousands of people, possibly tens of thousands, would instantly travel to your tract — and there’s a bully chance they’d clang it successful the process. Hundreds of commenters would statement the merits of immoderate you’d created aliases published, prime fights pinch you and each different astir it, and make you consciousness for illustration the internet’s main character. At slightest for a fewer minutes, until thing bigger and newer and much arguable deed Digg.com and everyone moved on.
In its early days, Digg was thing for illustration the homepage of the internet. Any personification could taxable a link, and past immoderate different personification could either beforehand it pinch a “dig” aliases demote it pinch a “bury.” The champion and astir celebrated worldly made the homepage, which was seen by tens of millions of group a month. The astir arguable worldly had epic comments sections.
So galore of Digg’s features, from its voting system to its commenting strategy to its occasional teeming toxicity, are omnipresent connected the net now. But successful 2004, erstwhile Kevin Rose was moving connected the first versions of his caller news level — back erstwhile he was champion known arsenic a big connected the TechTV web — it was each marque new. And what Rose and others built during that clip has changed the measurement we each usage the net ever since.
I precocious chatted pinch Rose, who is now a podcaster and investor, astir why he built Digg the measurement he did and why he felt for illustration giving users transparency and power was truthful important. We besides talked astir the bequest of immoderate of the devices he helped create, the decease of the homepage and the emergence of the news feed, and what happens erstwhile your institution goes from a nosy thought to a imaginable rate cow. In the past 20 years, Rose has seen conscionable astir each area of the tech industry, and he thinks there’s a lawsuit for Digg to make a comeback now — but only successful a very different firm form.
This question and reply has been edited for magnitude and clarity.
How do you retrieve the net from correct earlier you started moving connected Digg?
There was immoderate societal activity showing up for the first time, wherever we saw group benignant of coming together — Friendster was a large societal network, and it was like, “Whoa, I tin friend group and benignant of spot what they’re up to.” And that felt really different. We had email, obviously. We had walled gardens for illustration AOL and each those different platforms that came earlier that were allowing america to chat. But not everyone was online, you know? It conscionable wasn’t a thing.
So, I was playing astir pinch Friendster, and past I retrieve seeing Delicious for societal bookmarking. That was really interesting: group are really bookmarking and redeeming things they want to revisit later. That was different signal. And past Flickr became a spot to publically stock photos, and it was a really overseas point to say, “I’m going to expose immoderate of my individual photos.” It felt weird because photos were ever specified a backstage thing. People were taking them connected integer cameras and syncing their cameras to their computers and downloading the photos from their computers via, like, USB cables.
I conscionable retrieve thinking, Okay, group are starting to link successful ways that I hadn’t seen before. They’re starting to stock accusation that had antecedently been locked away. And past I was a large instrumentality of Slashdot. Slashdot was tech news, and they were 100 percent user-submitted stories. They conscionable had nary measurement to rank them. It was an editor that chose which ones were connected the beforehand page, and they wouldn’t supply immoderate visibility into what was being submitted. That’s truthful weird! You’re taking each these submissions, but you’re not showing everybody other each the cool worldly that’s being submitted? It seems for illustration gatekeeping. Why not let everyone to spot that worldly and really ballot connected it?
And then, this really weird point happened wherever this exertion started being supported by browsers, which was Asynchronous JavaScript — they telephone it Ajax — which allowed you to click connected thing and spot the page refresh without having to spell to different page.
That was what made Gmail consciousness truthful magical!
Yes, exactly. It was for illustration it was the exertion that unlocked truthful overmuch of what we saw connected Web 2.0, because personification could click connected a voting button, and we could spot the number spell up without having to spell to different page. In the first type of Digg, if you clicked to excavation something, it would return you to different page that was like, “Thank you for your Digg.” Then, erstwhile we saw Ajax, I was like, “Oh, wow, this allows america to do inline voting. Let’s adhd it.” We sewage that moving beautiful quick. We made this really cool animated benignant of fade-in and fade-out effect, and group were like, “Wow, I conscionable for illustration voted connected thing and saw the number spell up.” It sounds truthful silly now, but it was a beautiful large woody backmost then.
Digg was each tech news for, like, the first month, and I launched it because I thought, well, this would beryllium an improved, much societal type of Slashdot. And arsenic being a geek, I benignant of wanted to conscionable fig out: Is location thing here? Are location nuggets that the editors of Slashdot are overlooking that the masses would travel together and ballot connected and bring to the surface? Then, we noticed that group were submitting worldly that was conscionable for illustration extracurricular of the tech realm. And the group were conscionable asking for much description of our items that we allowed group to submit. It was like, ‘Okay, well, let’s spell broader present and conscionable spot what that surfaces.” And it conscionable started working.
It was specified a smash-up of things. But astatine the aforesaid time, nary 1 had really done voting. There was nary measurement to say, like, “I ballot connected a portion of content.” And for me, it was specified a no-brainer. Like, of course we’re gonna ballot connected things connected the net later. This should exist. We did a fistful of iterations connected that stuff. And Daniel [Burka, a designer who yet worked astatine Digg] picked a really cool colour palette — he made it yellow. And we went backmost and distant connected whether it should beryllium an arrow aliases a thumb. He designed a small thumb, and I didn’t for illustration the measurement immoderate of the fingers looked, truthful we redesigned it. We went backmost and distant a fewer times there. And we yet sewage to this thought of a thumb going up pinch a number adjacent to it, which, again, I cognize it sounds simple, but we’ve ne'er seen that before.
Do you ever wonder, if you had travel up pinch thing wholly different — alternatively of a thumb, it was for illustration an alligator pointing upward — if now location would conscionable beryllium upward pointing alligators each complete the internet?
It was a very unusual thing, wherever I deliberation it was truthful universally known as, like, “I for illustration this,” that it was easy for group to transcript it, you know?
But the point that was really absorbing is that we started realizing, well, these votes — we tin return them, and we tin provender them backmost into our algorithm that we were processing and actually, hopefully, put together a customized news provender based connected what you’re liking. And truthful that’s the worldly that we patented and really ended up being the astir valuable plus that we had. We sold Digg for, like, thing — half a cardinal dollars aliases thing — that Betaworks bought and took it over. But the patents we sold for millions of dollars to LinkedIn. The patents were truthful valuable to LinkedIn because they were adding a batch of societal elements. They wanted a protect patent strategy against Facebook, and truthful they ended up buying the patents.
They’ve ne'er been tested because I deliberation that, obviously, Facebook knows that we person anterior creation connected each that stuff, the for illustration fastener and each that. Maybe a twelvemonth and a half aliases 2 years later, Mark [Zuckerberg] came to my agency and was talking to maine a bunch astir that because it was a little play successful clip wherever we were larger than Facebook. He was asking maine a batch of questions about, you know, digs and really they worked.
To beryllium fair, though, I ne'er wanted to get protect astir it. I thought of this is arsenic thing cosmopolitan that each sites could use — I didn’t invent voting, truthful it felt very overseas for maine to record a patent connected thing and effort to artifact different sites from doing it. And truthful our ineligible folks had told america to get patents conscionable because you’ll want to person them again, for conscionable protect purposes.
It seems you had to choose, comparatively early connected astatine Digg, “How do we determine what’s popular?” I deliberation my presumption was ever that immoderate gets the astir digs triumph — axenic meritocracy. But past it sounds for illustration beautiful quickly you tally into: okay, this strategy doesn’t activity for a full assortment of reasons. It’s not what you want to beryllium about, it’s a gameable system, connected and on. And past you person to commencement thinking, “Okay, what are the different metrics of occurrence that we attraction about?” I deliberation you tin way the full people of the adjacent 20 years by the metrics of occurrence we decided to attraction astir connected the internet. I’m funny really you thought done that — what other you decided was important.
In Digg V1, I had an admin interface that had each azygous class listed out, and past it said the number of digs that had to deed successful bid for it to spell connected the homepage.
Like a hardcoded number for each one?
Yep, that was each it was. Just benignant of thumb successful the aerial — if a class was becoming much and much celebrated and much group were visiting it, past we would summation those numbers and bump them up each mates of weeks.
And then, to your point, erstwhile group started getting a batch of traffic, they started encouraging their ain audiences to spell and excavation our stuff. And past we would spot a fewer things. One, we spot that they didn’t observe it organically because location was, like, nary referrer. They’d straight to the permalink page, and they would excavation from that page, and they hadn’t done thing other connected the site. So, that was 1 signal. Or we saw 1 IP reside would person for illustration 50 digs from it, and truthful it would beryllium for illustration everyone successful the office.
I retrieve 1 time, location was a CNET article, and it had for illustration 100 and immoderate overseas digs to it. And it was sitting location sitting connected the Upcoming section, but it hadn’t made the jump complete to the homepage. Because if it each came from a azygous IP address, we would heavy discount the digs — “karma,” we called it down the scenes. Karma was a operation of like… my god, it was, it was a nightmare. It was a nest of things. How caller are the accounts? How galore of them came from uncovering it people done an up-and-coming conception versus going straight to the nexus itself? How galore were unsocial IP addresses? There was conscionable a bunch of worldly that went into it — really agelong they went and clicked out, and actually, did they click retired and sojourn the article anterior to digging it? You know, things for illustration that.
So, there’s astir apt astir 10 aliases 15 different weights that we had internally. And group were getting pissed. They would deliberation Digg is simply a scam: “It’s astatine 115, and it’s not making the homepage!” And we couldn’t say, “Yeah, it’s because everyone astatine CNET dug this article, and we’re not going to fto it get connected the homepage.”
It was conscionable a challenging clip because past you’re fighting a PR battle, which is like, really do we beryllium that thing is fair? I don’t attraction if this article makes the beforehand page; I conscionable want to make judge it’s genuinely contented of the crowds.
Honestly, I deliberation that Reddit did the correct point wherever they deputize group to make those decisions on pinch an algorithm versus it conscionable being our soul editors that were looking astatine stuff.
Is that process disillusioning astatine immoderate point? You travel into this because what you want is transparency, and you want everyone to beryllium capable to spot and for it to beryllium a existent meritocracy. And then, oh, a existent meritocracy really conscionable ace doesn’t work.
I should person learned this instruction respective times complete now astatine this constituent successful my career. But anytime location is simply a financial incentive, you’re gonna get bad participants, and they travel retired of the woodwork successful the tens of thousands. So, you know, erstwhile Digg was doing 30-something cardinal monthly uniques, we were banning thousands of accounts per day. We couldn’t moreover support up pinch it. There was truthful overmuch to beryllium gained from getting your communicative connected the beforehand page of Digg. Once an world assemblage caught connected wherever they could conscionable prosecute and outsource group to conscionable beryllium location and create clone accounts, it was an absolute nightmare.
The point I retrieve astir Digg is really overmuch that beforehand page was a thing. And I deliberation portion of the logic I wanted to talk to you successful the first spot is I deliberation we’ve mislaid that thought — homepages don’t really beryllium anymore, and I miss that. But now I’m wondering if this push toward individualizing and personalizing the acquisition is conscionable a consequence to trying to fto the strategy activity astatine scale, and it conscionable doesn’t.
I deliberation that’s right. But we did it the incorrect way. It was really challenging because we had grown the squad rather a bit, to 50-plus heads. And we had an immature advertisement level and advertisers that didn’t cognize really to aliases whether they could spot advertizing connected Digg. And because Digg would get very toxic astatine times — you’d get a very heavy debated governmental article that hits the homepage — it felt for illustration we really didn’t person power complete the site. So, you would get advertisers that would say, “I don’t know, this contented seems a small excessively dicey for me.”
We had this infinitesimal wherever our investors were like, “You request to cleanable up the site, and make it much profitable, because you’re gonna person a difficult clip raising early rounds of financing.” I deliberation what Reddit did, successful retrospect, that was rather smart was they kept the squad comparatively mini and benignant of fto the marketplace mature astir them. I consciousness for illustration we benignant of grew the squad to an unthinkable burn, and past we tried to spell measurement excessively commercialized and make it much of a cleaned-up experience. But successful reality, the mostly of group were coming location for the odd, weird worldly that they couldn’t find anyplace else.
Could you person said backmost successful the day, “This ace controversial, governmental worldly that everybody’s yelling astatine each different about, is conscionable not what we do here. We’re going to footwear this worldly disconnected the platform”? Is that a prime you could person made? Is it conscionable weights you should person made?
It was increasing truthful fast, it was immoderate of our hottest content! It was insane really engaged governmental users are. They are immoderate of the astir hardcore successful position of usage and commenting; they’re conscionable addicted to this stuff. And truthful it was becoming much of our traffic. I deliberation we should person fixed them their ain area to play and said, “Hey, this is your arena. Go create and person fun.”
Is it imaginable to do the point you were trying to do astatine existent scale? Or does everything yet get excessively large to make consciousness arsenic 1 cohesive thing?
I deliberation you conscionable deed difficult caps connected the size you tin turn to. There’s only truthful galore group that are gonna beryllium willing successful conscionable a singular homepage of content, you know? I consciousness for illustration we could person been the amended type of Slashdot and continued to predominate and been a huge, monolithic tech source. Techmeme Plus Plus aliases whatever. I deliberation we could person buckled down and said, “Digg is 10 labor aliases 15 aliases whatever, and we’re each astir this. We’re not going to do X, Y, and Z. Let’s put immoderate guardrails successful spot present and conscionable beryllium a awesome small niche site.”
It’s funny, now, because I really really wanted it to beryllium a tech news website. And it was the organization and others that ended up joining the squad that pushed and forced my manus — not forced it but really said, “We should spell for thing bigger here.” And past erstwhile you get investors involved, there’s a batch of group sitting astir the array that want to spot you person that billion-dollar-plus outcome.
And you push connected that thought of bigger things agelong enough, and you yet conscionable extremity up pinch societal networks, which, to immoderate extent, seems for illustration what happened, right? Did you person conversations astir trying to spell beryllium a societal network?
We were being crushed connected that side, particularly erstwhile Twitter started gaining momentum. I noticed beautiful quickly that Twitter was breaking news stories faster than we were.
Their elemental “What are you up to today?” container was truthful different from our flow. Our travel was like: springiness america a URL, springiness america a story. We didn’t let text-based submissions — you had to person a URL associated pinch it.
And I’m not a instrumentality of characteristic parity aliases copying different websites. I thought Twitter was doing Twitter conscionable fine, you know? I didn’t want to conscionable clone what they had done.
Kind of an different position these days.
Well, backmost then, it was really frowned upon. When group would motorboat thing new, if it was thing wherever we were like, “Huh, I hadn’t thought astir that,” we didn’t transcript each other’s stuff. We were like, “Wow, they did a really bully job, bravo to them.” I’m not going to return that feature. That’s thing they came up with.
Nothing ever really came on to effort and do Digg amended than Digg aliases return that thought to the adjacent level. If I wanted to spell find thing cool connected the internet, successful 2004-ish, I was benignant of spoiled for choice. Since then, I’m conscionable gonna spell to 1 of my news feeds and dream there’s thing there. That serves a purpose, but not the aforesaid one, and I’ve ne'er really been capable to fig retired why that thought of the cosmopolitan homepage conscionable benignant of went away.
We for illustration to judge there’s this thought of a cosmopolitan homepage. But successful reality, if immoderate institution wants to spell for scale, they conscionable can’t trust upon this thought that 40 to 50 stories per time are gonna globally fresh everyone’s tastes. And otherwise, you’re conscionable capped astatine a difficult number of users that for illustration that peculiar perspective of things.
Like, now, if you want to cognize astir the best, weirdest programming shit, it’s Hacker News. If you want to conscionable spot globally what’s happening successful tech, Techmeme’s the spot. Product Hunt astir apt still serves up-and-coming caller things connected the app side. So, location are definite ways that we get that information. But for me, because we person truthful galore different varying interests, societal networks conscionable service america truthful overmuch better. I tin beryllium connected a societal web and get the craziest news astir the Klotho macromolecule and really it extends life and, astatine the aforesaid time, get wacky, crazy poodles jumping complete integrative cups to the Zelda taxable euphony — I person an relationship that does conscionable that, which is amazing. I tin get each of my individual characteristic that is me, solved by conscionable pursuing a fistful of accounts that correspond me.
There’s a mentation there, though, that says the full “wisdom of the crowd” thought has conscionable gone away. And now it’s been replaced by individual group but besides this amalgamation of worldly I’ve signaled that I attraction about. And what matters is the strategy getting amended astatine giving it backmost to me. But it intends the thought of “the internet” being 1 point has conscionable died.
I deliberation conscionable the net sewage excessively big. And also, honestly, I judge the contented of the crowds tin nutrient really boring, non-sophisticated results. So, for me, it’s astir individual curation of tastemakers and group that I trust, and that circle tin grow aliases detract depending connected the twelvemonth aliases my liking complete time.
But I consciousness you successful that, sometimes, I wish I could conscionable get a amended zeitgeist of what’s going connected globally that is extracurricular of my bubble, right? Because the threat present is that we’re conscionable being benignant of spoon-fed the worldly that we already love. And so, how’s it introducing caller perspectives and caller ideas and, you know, turning maine connected to caller accusation that I wouldn’t usually see, right? And I deliberation that that is the downside of and the bummer to each of this, you know, is missing retired connected immoderate of that.
How do you do that now? You’re a funny feline learning tons of caller things — erstwhile you’re like, “What cool worldly is happening?” — wherever do you go?
I bounce around. I usage Glimpse a lot; it’s a awesome measurement to spot trends arsenic they’re starting to popular off. I person a fistful of newsletters I subscribe to that I see high-quality.
It’s funny: location are 2 sides of my characteristic type. One is to play astatine the edges and break things and make judge I ne'er suffer that because that has served maine good arsenic an investor and allows maine to hopefully spot astir corners early. And past there’s different portion of maine that, literally, I’ve spent the past 2 weeks conscionable going heavy connected dumb phones and really we tin disconnect from this technology.
I’m toying astir pinch this thought of rubbing writer more, but yet figuring retired the clip and ways to play and person nosy astatine the edges arsenic well. I deliberation astir of america are leaning measurement excessively acold successful connected being conscionable ever connected our devices. And I’m getting really superior astir trying to fig retired what that equilibrium is for me. I’d for illustration for it to beryllium the adjacent section of what I activity on, being really thoughtful astir trying to promote group to find balance, because I deliberation we’ve gone measurement excessively acold connected the different broadside of having to opportunity to ourselves, Am I missing something?
It’s benignant of the extremity constituent of that 20-year cycle, right? We went to everything being endless each the time, and everyone is slow realizing why that’s a problem. I perceive much and much group each the clip talking astir dumb phones and talking astir curation. And it’s why everybody loves email newsletters now. It turns the net backmost into a point that I do. And past I put it down. And we spent 20 years forgetting really to put it down.
As I deliberation astir the cosmopolitan homepage thing, portion of maine thinks we request that much than ever now. Instead of having to spell to 50 websites and 10 different forums and publication 20 newsletters, really tin I conscionable get a speedy consciousness of what group attraction astir and what they’re saying… and past move connected to my life?
I deliberation you’re perfectly right. If you tin find retired who owns Digg, I would emotion to bargain it backmost from them and move it backmost into that old-school homepage. So, I don’t cognize if you person immoderate connections…
I’ll look into it. But let’s conscionable quickly reboot Digg correct here, for 2024. What would you do?
I would heavy thin into AI connected this beforehand — AI for vetting and AI for a bunch of different things. If personification posts a comment, you could instantly tally it against AI and say, “Is this remark additive to the article of substance, aliases is it attacking someone?” There could beryllium immoderate really absorbing affirmative usage cases for AI present to thief pinch keeping things civil. I would thin beautiful heavy connected AI for some summaries for contented moderation.
I would not want to clasp an advertisement model. I’d overmuch alternatively person it beryllium almost much Wikipedia-style, wherever it’s community-supported successful immoderate way. It wouldn’t beryllium astir building the adjacent billion-dollar, publically traded company, but much for illustration a inferior for good. I would want to really thin successful heavy connected this thought of providing a safe spot for people. It’s unfortunate to maine that I’ve had to measurement distant from respective different societal networks retired location because they conscionable tin beryllium truthful toxic astatine times. And truthful I would want to walk a awesome woody of clip reasoning done those issues.
It would beryllium important to spell retired and astir apt beryllium down pinch 50 aliases 100 of the largest moderators connected Reddit and inquire them what features and functionality they’re missing that they would for illustration to spot and person it really beryllium community-driven features and functionality connected the tract versus top-down telling you what you should have. I don’t know. I deliberation that’d beryllium a bully spot to start.