Digg’s Grim Reckoning: App Shuts Down, Layoffs Pave Way for Radical Rebirth
Digg, Kevin Rose’s relaunch of his formerly well-known link-sharing platform, is dismissing a significant number of its employees, the firm disclosed last Friday. However, the enterprise is not shutting down, according to Digg CEO Justin Mezzell. Instead, Rose will return to devote himself entirely to Digg as the company endeavors to stabilize. Rose will maintain his role as a consultant at the…
“If you find yourself nostalgic for an earlier era of the internet, you may welcome the news that after spending the last decade or so being passed between owners like a Christmas present no one wants, Digg—the site that was Reddit before Reddit—has been relaunched, with its new incarnation now in open beta. Now, original co-founder Kevin Rose is back to try again; along with Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, he re-acquired the site last year. “
Yes, we seem to have way too many sites and options nowadays. We’ve already seen the spin-off from Reddit to decentralised alternatives such as Raddle, Ramble, Beehaw, and many more.
But this is a nostalgic throwback to the good old Digg days, a bit like when Reddit started out itself. One can only now hope that MySpace would have come back in a similar fashion, and usurped Facebook. But we can still hope…
Após anos fora dos holofotes das redes sociais, a plataforma Digg reestreou sua versão nova e revisada, símbolo de um renascimento no mundo digital, no dia de hoje. Antigamente considerada uma das maiores alternativas à então emergente Reddit, a Digg fez sua marca na história da internet antes de enfrentar um colapso acentuado e perder usuários para outras plataformas. Com o relançamento, a expectativa da empresa é reunir uma nova comunidade em um espaço digital que promete mais controle e privacidade para os seus usuários, algo que cada vez mais se torna uma preocupação em plataformas de grande porte.(…)
Digg, la legendaria plataforma que dominó la web antes del ascenso de Reddit, ha lanzado oficialmente su nueva versión diseñada para competir directamente por el trono de las comunidades digitales. Tras un periodo de pruebas cerradas, el sitio abre sus puertas al público con un enfoque renovado que prioriza la curación humana y nuevas herramientas de moderación.
Digg founder Kevin Rose on the necessity for trusted social communities within the AI period
“The useless web concept is actual,” Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian advised Digg founder Kevin Rose, referring to the concept a lot of the web isn’t human — it’s largely bots. The 2 entrepreneurs have since teamed as much as re-envision the right way to construct a social neighborhood on this world the place, very quickly, will probably be exhausting to inform who’s an actual particular person…
Kevin Rose on Digg, reinvention, and startup investing
Kevin Rose final spoke at Disrupt in 2012, when Digg was in the course of one in every of tech’s most talked-about pivots. Greater than a decade later, he returns to TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, occurring October 27-29 at San Francisco’s Moscone West, to speak about relaunching Digg alongside Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian — and to share what that have taught him about product, neighborhood, and…
Well, apparently, the whole Charlie Kirk thing has the moderators actually moderating for the first time, and some people (the right) are flipping shit.
They’ve started calling for Digg to ban all political content.
What kind of psycho 1984 bullshit is that??
“B..bbut i just want a place away from all the politics 😫😫”
Then don’t fucking look at it???
You can’t take an entire social media site, who’s goal is to generate discussion and post media in a SOCIAL setting and say, “You can’t talk about that because it hurts my feefees 😠”
And the constant harassment and murder of POC, LGBT, and literally anyone they disagree with is fine?? Because it doesn’t hurt THEIR feelings???
Digg was supposedly intended to be a left-wing social media where bots are banned.
Fuckin threw the mask off the instant they had the chance apparently.
Ever since the iOS 26 got announced at WWDC earlier this year I wanted to try the developer beta for myself, despite me not being a developer. Only someone that’s always wanting to try out the newest things so that everyone else can have a smooth experience. I happened to have an iPhone SE 2nd Generation lying around and thankfully iOS 26 is able to get that update, so I began the process of getting the developer beta and got it loaded on the device nice and easy with little to no hiccups.
After playing around with it for a bit I did notice & run into some issues. Some major like iOS’ UI full on crashing at times, and others like the image above where after trying to rearrange the icons on my homescreen my dock became forever misaligned. Even after a restart of my device & a reset of my homescreen layout the bug has yet to be fixed. Yes I already submitted multiple bug reports to Apple, they’re probably sick of me at this point, but hopefully it gets patched in a later beta build before the GM, or Golden Master, build is released followed by the version 1 of the stable release going out to the general public.
As far as the new “Liquid Glass” design language goes, I’m kind of a fan. I can see where some may not like it because of how illegible the text can be sometimes and also the look & aesthetic is different for a lot of people. But for myself, this is making me reminisce of a simpler time in the early 2000’s when in my early days of school I would frequent the computer lab to see old see-through iMacs with Mac OS X at the time adopting the Aqua design language.
The look and feel definitely gives me similar vibes and the new bouncy animations just add to the experience. In my honest opinion it brings the old design language to the modern day, while adding some flair to it to make it some semblance of personality. Something that is definitely needed considering Android’s announcement of their Material You Expressive design language, but that’s for another post.
Adding to the nostalgia of it all I recently got a Testflight invitation to alpha test the revival of another early 2000’s internet mainstay Digg. As someone who is a frequent Reddit user looking for a better alternative I was more than happy to get on board but first, a little background:
Digg was a news aggregator that was basically similar to Reddit in where people could submit articles and if they like them they can “digg” them or if they dislike them they can “bury” them. You can submit articles into various communities ranging from Technology to Sports and beyond. It debuted in 2004 and was a mainstay in the indie internet discourse. Even spawning a podcast called Diggnation where hosts Kevin Rose & Alex Albrecht, both people I’m familiar with from their days on TechTV and G4 respectively, would talk about what was trending on the platform at the time of the podcast’s recording. During the time where Digg was owned by BuySellAds and then later Money Group the company was hemorrhaging its user-base because of the decisions of the owners.
Luckily Kevin Rose and surprisingly…Reddit’s cofounder Alex Ohanian bought back all of Digg’s assets for an undisclosed amount. But they said they were gonna relaunch the platform and give it the classic feel with some modern touches. This piqued my interest as lately I’ve been looking into “old internet” designs of websites. Even going so far as to install Stylus and user made themes where I can make current sites look like how they looked decades ago just for that sweet hit of nostalgic good times.
So I jumped in and joined their GroundBreakers program and made sure I signed up for the alpha test for both iOS and Android as I currently daily drive a S24. The alpha test was released on iOS Testflight first and I got to installing it right away and getting involved. Posting articles I happened to find, pictures I had taken throughout my days, and walls of text for my ideas on how to improve the platform. A lot of which has been well received. As of the writing of this post I have received 528 diggs and found 78 gems total. These gems are for when you post something or interact with something that ends up going viral on the platform.
There is some AI elements to the platform but so far it’s just been limited to just summarizing articles and videos that are posted to the platform, which I have found helpful.
Overall these two tests have been a pretty decent experience so far, and I look forward to making sure that when both iOS 26 and Digg launch proper, that anyone and everyone will have a smooth experience as possible.
YouTube recommended me a nearly decade-old video / mini documentary on Kalaripayattu, the ancient martial art of India. Setting aside that this is/was apparently Digg’s official YouTube channel, this is some fascinating stuff.
The amount of physical conditioning the body would need to go through to get to these guys’ level would be brutal. I would not want to be on their wrong side, that’s for sure! I wish they’d showcase this at the Olympics or something. They don’t even need to have a competition, just show how cool it is!
I’m not sure why YouTube thought I needed to see it, but I’m glad I took the time to watch!
Oh wow…I completely forgot I had this account. It’s been a minute. Lemme catch up on what’s going on around here, especially since early 2000’s internetcore seems to be making a serious comeback. SpaceHey invoking old school Myspace vibes, Digg reviving itself, etc. I’m excited to see what’s to come.
Piling into “Web 2.0” was the subject of the cover story for this issue, which mentioned there were alternatives to MySpace including Facebook, Bebo, Xanga, and Zooped. One of the points made, though, was that there were skeptics including “Web 1.0 survivors,” who’d seen the “dot-com crash” after bemoaning “the commercialization of the ‘information superhighway’” and were quite happy to forecast another one.
