
Digg v1: Betaworks Flushes Seven Years of Internet History Down the Toilet - nickcobb
http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2012/08/digg_betaworks.php
======
ars
From the FAQ on the page:

What about my data from the old Digg?

We believe that users own their data. We’re working on a system that will
extract all user data from the old Digg infrastructure. In August we’re
launching an archive website for users of the old Digg to find, browse, and
share a history of their submissions, diggs, and comments.

If you’d like to be notified when your data will be available, just enter your
email address here[1]. Then stay tuned, and let us know if you have any
questions.

[1]<http://digg.com/archive>

~~~
s_henry_paulson
Meh, I was on Digg from 2005-2007, I didn't delete my account because I
thought some day I might want to look through my old stuff.

I went to take a look sometime around 2010, and they had nothing of mine. No
comments, no submissions, nothing. Probably there somewhere, but nowhere
accessible to me.

I wouldn't hold my breath on getting anything back.

Not to mention, an archive website still doesn't help anyone following links
that have been placed on the internet over the last decade.

------
benologist
The spammers and the clowns paid to spam digg for SEO lost all their work.
That's quite possibly the best part of the new digg, especially if they can be
kept out.

~~~
illuminate
Yeah, I find the "loss" of the useless former data to be a positive, not a
negative. If their site was socially "corrupted" by astroturfers and paid
Diggers, starting over is the best way to create a new culture.

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untog
You don't suppose that SFWeekly is annoyed at the SEO _they_ lost, are they?

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:pmMowDa...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:pmMowDad_EcJ:digg.com/sfweekly+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

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ceslami
From a TechCrunch article published yesterday, following an interview with
John Borthwick:

"According to Borthwick, it would have cost “hundreds of thousands per month”
to keep the site running on its old platform. Even though the site was state-
of-the-art just a few years ago, most of the infrastructure would be
considered legacy technology by a modern startup."

That's why. SF Weekly, and the author Keith Plocek, obviously did not reach
out to Betaworks before running this article.

~~~
alttab
Would it not have been possible to "cement" those pages into static HTML and
throw them up on a CDN? The only thing "digg" about Digg now is the domain
name. Why they bought that and then threw out the baby with the bathwater is
beyond me.

~~~
cookiecaper
For what it's worth something like this is still probably possible. I'd be
shocked if any sensible person would get access to Digg's dataset only to
delete it immediately thereafter. While they've replaced the site with
something else to get the ball rolling, I don't get the impression that
they're crass and/or ignorant enough to just destroy the whole thing, so we
may yet see an archive of the old Digg.

Also, I think the old Digg demonstrated that it didn't really care much about
the data anyway.

~~~
geon
Considering all the popular reposts on Reddit, they could use the database of
already submitted Digg content to populate the daily stream of links when not
much else is happening.

------
AlexanderZ
Oh no, I always begin my morning with digged articles from 2007. Actually, no
I don't. So, who cares, apart from SEO guys?

And I love how they say: _What would've been the harm in leaving those
archives up? It's not that complicated._

Of course it's not complicated, it's actually fun! What can be better than
starting a new project with importing old and unwanted records from a screwed
up database?

~~~
sp332
Mainly, it's always bad form to delete user's data. But also, this stuff is
useful to historians. For example, here's a site that just posts interesting
things about the Geocities archive (which Yahoo deleted but some archivists
mostly mirrored first). <http://contemporary-home-
computing.org/1tb/archives/2559>

~~~
AlexanderZ
They didn't delete users' data, they preferred not to import it into their
brand new product.

They will also allow users to download data later:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4325004>

As for historians, the content is still out there. Digg doesn't host content,
it "hosts" links.

~~~
sp332
Content including what links they liked, when. Possibly other data but I
didn't use digg so I don't know specifically.

------
adriand
Didn't Digg use rel="nofollow" on submitted stories? And if so, wouldn't that
mean that links from Digg would have zero SEO value?

~~~
alanfang
Officially according to bing/google nofollow links don't pass SEO value.
However there is quite a bit of evidence that they do in fact have value.

~~~
xpose2000
They have end-user value for human eyes and referal traffic. But none in terms
of "link juice".

------
KeyBoardG
Further proving that no matter what you do, someone on the internet will write
an article complaining about it.

------
AznHisoka
Digg has no SEO value. The content they have from the past is rarely relevant
- so they have no evergreen content. Unlike sites like Quora or even Yahoo
Answers where content written in the past still has value right now.

------
brackin
I realised how much sense this makes for BetaWorks, they have so much social
data from bitly and knowledge in the space. They can make a real consumer end
to bitly as well as the enterprise tools they're building.

They can make a semi-curated and semi-data driven broadsheet on any topic.
It's a beautiful interface for a V1 and I think if they use all of the data
from bitly it could be powerful. They can get a grasp of how many people are
actually clicking on links, how many social shares and upvotes there are.

Essentially a much better version of Flipboard that is data driven.

There's nothing wrong with making a version of Digg that embraces social
elements but Digg 4 was not it. It was trying to turn Digg into a Twitter
clone.

------
darrenkopp
Forgive me as I did not follow the original story very closely, but what
exactly did Betaworks buy? Are they even the owners of the old data, or did
they just buy the brand and code, whereas perhaps LinkedIn now owns the actual
data?

~~~
taligent
They aren't even using the code.

So it's basically a domain, page rank and traffic.

------
vlucas
When you see shit, you flush it. Kudos to Betaworks for making such a bold
move and actively working to make digg relevant again.

------
baby
Obviously lots of people in the comment here are far from the point made in
this article.

Digg v1 not redirecting and keeping old content is removing all of its
presence on google. How much was the % of digg's traffic coming form google? I
would say more than 50%.

They still have a few day until the next google dance, but they're basically
screwed now.

~~~
matterk
IIRC about 40% of diggs' traffic came from Google. But when they changed their
algo ~2 years ago to favor original/source content, our overall traffic
dropped by about 30%. The value of that traffic in advertising dollars was
significant, but in terms of participation in the community and growth of the
site, it was almost nothing. The new site isn't ad based, so I don't think
anyone really cares.

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lost_name
They seem to be implying that Digg was too big to fail, from an SEO
standpoint.

"But it only takes a couple clicks to realize all of the archives are gone.
All of them. All of the Ron Paul idolatry. All of the ASCII facepalms. All of
the linkbait. Gone."

That should be the problem, but obviously that content won't be missed.

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hellsten
1\. Kill Digg

2\. Wait for half the internet to write about it (with new links to digg.com)

3\. Put back the old Digg content

4\. Wait for half the internet to write about it (with new links to digg.com)

5\. Nasdaq Listing/Internet domination???

This strategy should work for all social-media startups. No guarantee of
profits though...

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bitsoda
You cannot come up for air without pissing someone off. Digg's carcass was
festering the internet. I'm glad to see it being taken in another direction.

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AznHisoka
1\. Scrape all of Digg before they flush their history 2\. Buy old domains and
put the content there 3\. Put ads all over. 4\. ??? 5\. Profit.

~~~
Kerrick
4\. Get sued for copyright infringement

5\. Profit [for the lawyers].

~~~
AznHisoka
it's mostly user generated content. They don't own any of it.

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PedroBatista
"Betaworks Flushes Seven Years of Internet History Down the Toilet"

And not a single f __k was given.

