

RIP Digg - taphangum
http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/19/rip-digg/

======
phatbyte
Am I the only one hoping for a "RIP Techcrunch" any time soon ?

She just completely throw Digg's work into the trash like useless fastfood
plastic bag.

This is what happens when you don't know how to create anything productive in
your life, and you spend your days talking sh __about other's people work. I
don't care if Digg is losing visitors, it was a new concept back then, and it
was successful, show some respect for the people who are/were still working
for it.

I'm seriously hating TC everyday a little more.

~~~
shantanubala
I wholeheartedly agree. I'd be lucky to have been even close to as successful
as someone like Kevin Rose. People make mistakes -- you never know how
successful something will be until you put it in action. I remember years ago
when I was watching Diggnation and reading Digg all the time. I've never had
near that level of influence over that many people. For that, I have massive
respect for Digg and its creator(s).

EDIT: Hell, Digg was probably what shifted my focus from just tech news to
actually starting programming and learning to start my own company -- it was
almost an inspiration. There's a lot more to its legacy that's unsung,
unappreciated, and undervalued.

------
ojbyrne
I don't know how anyone takes Sarah Lacy seriously. The bombast, the myth-
making and self congratulation, but most especially the complete disregard for
any annoying facts that get in her way.

" And Digg? Well we got Digg exactly right. We said it could sell for between
$150 million and $200 million, and over the next few months and years there
were several negotiations and at least one solid offer in that exact range.
But Digg — unlike peers like Flickr and Delicious– said no, and its best days
seemed ahead of it."

Presumably she is talking about the google talks, because that would be the
only "solid offer" in that exact range. And guess what, it was google who
walked away according to Techcrunch.

[http://techcrunch.com/2008/07/26/google-walks-away-from-
digg...](http://techcrunch.com/2008/07/26/google-walks-away-from-digg-deal/)

_Exactly Right_

~~~
taphangum
It seems like tech journalism itself is experiencing a bubble.

~~~
ahoyhere
Tech journalism has ALWAYS been this way. Ever hear of John C Dvorak?

~~~
barista
Thouh the numbers could have been exaggerated, its a fact that digg could have
been much more profitable had kevin thought of selling when there was a market
for it. Its one of many examples of how founders enamoured with their ideas
tend to push the startup past the prime. Groupon just did that a few months
ago. I can see myself reading a similar headline about them a few years from
now.

~~~
bl4k
the diff is that groupon is a cash machine. digg never was

------
zaidf
_The entrepreneurs were the exact opposite of the kids today seduced by the
promises of Y Combinator, easy cash of super angels and lure of TechCrunch
headlines._

Is she talking about the same Digg that had the founder on the BusinessWeek
cover?

Edit: Fascinating, _this_ very writer of the blog post put him on the
"controversial" cover. And then she wants to talk about a time when kids
weren't seduced by "easy cash." Defies logic, really.

~~~
w1ntermute
There's nothing people love more than an article romanticizing the good old
days.

------
ilamont
I thought this was going to be an analysis of Digg's current problems, but
seven out of ten paragraphs are about Sarah Lacy's BusinessWeek career, her
book, her current whereabouts, etc.

Much of what she does have to say about Digg and the history of Web startups
is questionable (for example, _"The entrepreneurs were the exact opposite of
the kids today seduced by the promises of Y Combinator, easy cash of super
angels and lure of TechCrunch headlines. They were doing something that still
stank of broken dreams and evaporated billions. And they were doing it for one
simple reason: they couldn’t stop themselves."_ )

Sometimes TechCrunch does well (particularly when it gets a real scoop) but
"R.I.P. Digg" is poor, in my opinion.

~~~
jlees
It's not only the entrepreneurial kids of today that want to be rockstars;
it's the "journalists", too.

------
budu3
It's a shame we live in a society the likes to kick people when they are down.
These are the same people who were cheer leading when digg was on a roll.

------
reduxredacted
Digg was awesome.

I remember when I created an account on the site. A friend kicked a link my
way from Fox News of all places ... that mentioned the site alongside
Slashdot. In my job at the time, crowdsourced sites focused on technology were
very useful. I left the site about a year after they decided to open up to
general news. My fear was that it would become what many of the emerging Web
2.0 news aggregation sites became: a political activist haven. Within several
months (not overnight as I had feared), it had ceased being a useful resource.
The breaking point was when there was no way to configure my profile to filter
out crap-political-commentary. I wrote them to have my account removed
(something that couldn't be done with a few clicks at the time).

I had taken it out of my daily "sites to check on" in 2007, but after reading
some commentary about how "all of the Web 2.0 sites had become BIASED! (OMG!)"
in early 2009, I visited the front page (now without an account with filters
setup). The top stories of the day were dominated by nearly everything that a
former female candidate for vice president had made.

I love Hacker News because despite its growing popularity, it has maintained
civility and avoided (most of the time) entries focused entirely on politics.

------
joebananas
Digg died long ago when the spammers won.

------
tomrod
Poor Digg staff.

I hear Reddit is hiring engineers...

~~~
cduruk
Actually, Digg is hiring too. We are looking for some great engineers and
sales people to join our team.

<http://jobs.digg.com>

~~~
tomrod
Well good! I enjoy Digg and would hate to see it go down like the article
implies.

------
dr_
Maybe it's also time to separate what is an interesting resource or tool from
what is an interesting business.

150-200 million is a lot for a company that seems to have earned very little
if anything. It's one thing for a Groupon to walk away from a deal, but Digg
should have cashed out.

I'm hardly ever on Digg anymore, but I am Hacker News a lot. I'm not sure if
Hacker News was ever constructed to be a business - seems like it was just
designed to be an interesting place for people in the community to get
together and share information - and that's just fine. Not every great idea is
necessarily a great business.

~~~
ericd
Click on the little Y in the upper left hand corner to see where Hacker News
comes from.

------
Qz
I don't understand what the boob autographing picture has to do with the
article whatsoever.

~~~
nkassis
I think it's kevin rose signing an autograph.

~~~
davidmurphy
Yep (linked to from the TC comments).

------
quinndupont
What's the exit strategy for Digg? With Kevin Rose out, but a lot of
investment already in it, can they just shutter it and write it off?

~~~
ianl
9m uniques monthly is still a decent amount, whether or not the company is
profitable is yet to be seen.

------
dhughes
My 2 cents, Digg.com user since April 2005.

I don't know if it was spam or all the format changes, each time a format
change occurred users complained - a lot, yet changes were implemented anyway.

The highlight of Digg's history I'd say was the HD-DVD encryption key everyone
put in posts refusing to back down I think that brought the users together.

Then one day the user-base seemed to suddenly shift rapidly to the right
almost overnight from a more centrist point of view, that cause a lot of
friction and comment wars.

Telling the people who use your website, some of who practically lived on the
website, what they should like and not like design-wise instead of listening
to them was disastrous and may have been the cause of Digg.com being abandoned
by most of its user-base.

~~~
snupples
I was there for about the same time period. In addition to the shift in the
community, around that same time the front page began to be dominated by
mediocrity (daily mail anyone?). If you checked the history on any of the
front page submitters it was obvious they were all in massive vote-collusion
rings.

Articles in these rings would instantly hit the front page with 200+ votes.
The front page became irrelevent, and on Digg -- as opposed to its competitor
Reddit -- there was not much else.

I stopped visiting months before the v4 fiasco, but even then it was already
long apparent that the essence of what made Digg special in the beginning was
long gone.

~~~
dhughes
Even places such as Slashdot are hard to get submissions accepted but I'd say
that's due more to the sheer volume of submissions, not as much in past years
but I'm sure Slashdot has a large user-base they've got at least a good eight
years experience over Digg and Reddit. I mean even Anonymous users can submit
at Slashdot.

I'd say it's more than having your funny cat picture or that article everyone
has seen 20 times posted because it's new to you it's the fact you can submit
your post and let the community decide what to do instead of having everything
outright rejected instantly - it makes for hard feelings and no sense of
community.

Believe it or not I think Digg is actually getting better community-wise, it
seems the rats have left the sinking ship. edit: I certainly don't mean Kevin!

------
motters
<http://www.google.com/trends?q=digg.com>

I used Digg for a while, and it became apparent over time that the quality
both of the news and also the comments was tanking. Once I discovered HN I
stopped using Digg altogether.

------
hammock
What is with the photo chosen for this article? Some random dude signing a
girl's chest?

~~~
myearwood
That's Kevin Rose. You can't tell because he's backing the camera.

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomashawk/167663907/>

------
Aaronontheweb
I stopped using Digg a long time ago, but the nonchalant way Sarah throws 6
years of work from hard-working people at Digg really pisses me off.

------
protomyth
I can't help but think that starting a new website with the RSS that they
removed wouldn't be such a bad idea. Keep running digg, but take all the ideas
and stuff the current digg community hates and build a new site (with
different theme/terminology obviously).

------
nethsix
I agree that she probably tried to sensationalize it. However, it is still an
insightful read about lessons that can be learnt from Digg, if you can hold
your attention long enough and look past the tabloid journalism elements.

------
jgh
Poor Twitter is getting all the blame from TechCrunch these days.

~~~
emehrkay
That's funny to me because I feel that TechCrunch was the BIGGEST twitter
cheerleader for many years. I even started a twitter account just because they
felt that it was so important to the web and this was before the everyday man
and celebrities created their accounts.

~~~
mirkules
Looking back, it's easy to get influenced by talking heads. For God's sake, I
used to listen and nod my head to Bill O'Reilly (for shame!)

------
tednaleid
Nice that they still have a Digg button at both the top and bottom of the
article.

------
iphoneedbot
IS there room for digg-like-sites that cater to specific verticals? For a
while, it was trendy to do digg clones and now they have all disappeared- is
voting based news site like digg still a good idea for news and information.

~~~
sjmulder
Hacker News itself is rather Digg-like and quite focussed.

Reddit is also quite interesting in how it lets you subscribe to reddits that
interest you (and unsubscribe from those that don’t), as well as allowing
anyone to make a new reddit. It prevents (or delays) the need for site
migration, like what happened with the Digg to Reddit exodus, by giving you
reddit migration. Don’t like /r/pogramming? Go to /r/coding! Etc.

