

The Digg Team Is Going To WaPo, But The Assets Aren’t - hornokplease
http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/30/washington-post-acqhires-digg/

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jerrya
Rob Malda recently moved to the WaPo where _he will be the Chief Strategist
and Editor-at-Large working for WaPo Labs._

[http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/03/05/202206/rob-malda-
cmd...](http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/03/05/202206/rob-malda-cmdrtaco-
joins-the-washington-post)

So this potentially places the founder of Slashdot heading the Digg Team at
the Washington Post.

Make of that what you will. (I'll note it is 2012, and there could be another
MySpace acquisition in the works.)

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TamDenholm
Digg is one of those websites i used to use on a daily basis, it was my main
source of news every day, now i forget it even exists until a story like this
pops up.

The one thing that this teaches me is that if you have a web property with a
decently sized user base, if you want to change things, do it incrementally
and get feedback from users as you do it, rather than carpet bomb them with
design and feature changes.

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xpose2000
I just browsed the "Trending" category on Digg for all topics. Most stories
have single digit comments. Ouch. Amazing how far the site has fallen since
its glory days.

~~~
rhizome
They are an extremely prominent example of Second-System Effect.

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michaelpinto
The irony that this hit the front page of Hacker News before the front page of
Digg isn't lost on me. As a Digg member since May 11th, 2006 my heart is
broken...

~~~
jlarocco
I knew I had a Digg account, and your post motivated me to check how old it
was. Apparently I joined Digg on 11/10/2005. I didn't even realize it still
existed, to be honest.

Definitely sad.

~~~
sebastianavina
06/06/06 Member Since

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hornbaker
Still _very_ respectable traffic on digg (as compared to reddit and HN):
<http://imgur.com/a/BMHXe>

I'd be surprised if the WaPo (or someone else) doesn't step up to take it
over.

~~~
fletchowns
Those stats are waaay inaccurate. <http://blog.reddit.com/2012/01/2-billion-
beyond.html>

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rexf
Contrary to how Facebook/Google loves to do the acqui-hire, this is just the
last part. Hiring without having to buy the useless company part.

~~~
rhizome
It's a pretty ignominious end, though, if it does come to pass that Digg just
shutters from this.

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dkrich
Will there be a Business Week cover story about Kevin Rose with the title "How
this kid lost $60 million in three years"?

[http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_33/b3997002....](http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_33/b3997002.htm)

Nah, that title probably won't sell too many magazines.

(This is a rip on BW's inflammatory, "let's ignore facts" writing style, not
Rose.)

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s0me0ne
Reddit's site is ugly and the UI is horrible. I've tried to use it and it
sucks. Plus there is so much childish crap on there. I remember first finding
Digg in 2005, then they opened it up to non-tech categories. It was still
good, because I could get the feeds for categories I liked. They added images
and pics, and I filtered that crap out as well. Then v4 happened and use went
down and the categories went very narrow and it sucked.

I really wish Hacker News had categories, but it would very hard to categorize
things. Right now I have a massive filter on Yahoo Pipes, but of its no where
near perfect. All I can work with is the title of the story to filter things
and link.

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majani
This sounds like the sensible way for a company to pick up an attractive team.
Picking up a junk product along with the team is a horrible thing to do to
shareholders in my view.

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PhrosTT
Makes you wonder whether or not you just sell and run given the chance.

