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Digg raises $8.5M more, rejects evidence it has been gamed

venturebeat.com — Digg, the news site that lets users rank stories by voting, has raised $8.5 million in fresh financing from existing backers, putting to rest for now speculation that it might sell to a bigger media player.

Who dugg this? Made popular Dec 28, 2006

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  • jayadelson, on 10/12/2007, -3/+33Regarding context, I was not responding to the specific question of whether or not JetNumbers did or did not accept money for a submission. I was responding to a question about "pay for digg sites" influencing Digg story promotions, which to date, I believe we have successfully prevented.

    I believe people try to game Digg often. Our community and systems, we believe, successfully thwart those efforts.

    So yes, I do think my comments were taken incorrectly out of context.
  • jayadelson, on 10/12/2007, -1/+20I know what you're asking about... Is there a way to make the titles some how less misleading, etc. Frankly, I don't think that's for us to do. Perhaps we can work on features which allow submissions to be flagged in various ways, such as "Inaccurate" does today. We can't really "Wikipedia" the titles because it invites too much abuse.

    We're open to suggestions, of course.
  • misterpony, on 10/12/2007, -1/+20Hopefully this round of financing will be spent on research for Dupe and Spam control.

    Now, a n00b question: How do they count people who have multiple RSS digg feeds, but also routinely surf the site? For myself, I use Sage and My Yahoo and have 12 different rss feeds in each (friends, comments), which I will check both periodically, but I spend a lot of time on Digg anyway, generating page views that way. They can't possibly know that all of those feeds are all for me, so are they counting me as 25 different users?
  • V1be, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11Most of the front page stories are submissions from the same people. Being a top user is, in many ways, gaming digg.
  • stevesearer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10Jay I came up with an idea to thwart duplicate stories a while ago. It actually received quite a few diggs when it was submitted to digg too. It basically consists of organizing stories into a topic rather than specific stories and would actually work very similarly to how the podcasting section now works. Hate to do it but check out the post:

    http://insidesocialnews.blogspot.com/2006/10/duplicate-stories-idea.html
  • xienze, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Maybe I'm missing something here, but doesn't the fact that Digg had to raise money from investors as opposed to advertising revenue kind of speak to Digg's inherent unprofitability? I think Digg is a great site and all, but it's just like every other Web 2.0 site -- no real business plan, just lots and lots of visitors.
  • infowar, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9Digg has to be the most gamed social news site. Just take a look at the front page and see how many duplicate people there are submitting stories. All in all, its not the real world news but its fun to read.
  • chriskzoo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8Read this knowing that I've been on Digg since the beginning (or close) and love the site.

    The fact of the matter is, despite claims by Jay and Kevin that the site is not being "gamed," Digg is by and large controlled by the top 50 users or so and it is thus not a "democratic" promoting of stories at all. Take me for example - my Digg ranking is 191, and despite the fact that my ranking is high considering 1.3-20M users, my stories RARELY get promoted, yet I am in the top 1/100th of 1 percent on Digg as far as rankings.

    So while there may not be widespread "gaming," the site is inherently "gamed" because only 50 or so people control the front page with the other 1.3M rarely getting stories promoted.

    The solution might be to make submitted stories anonymous for the first 48 hours. Then, only the truly interesting stories will get promoted and after 48 hours the submitter can be "revealed" - thus having a truly democratic promotion of stories and still allowing people to check out what their friends have dugg, albeit with a slight delay.
  • titlesaysitall, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10I'd like to see a feature on Digg that disallows submission with title says it all.
  • thorpus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7@ misterpony - Most sites know what your IP address is and use that to determine if you are one user or multiple.
  • dknighton, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7The best thing they could do to control dupes is to just automatically pull in every story from Engadget, Boing-Boing, Ars Technica, etc. etc...and then disallow anyone from submitting from those sites. I mean, every ***** Engadget story already gets submitted by no less than five people, so why not just head them off at the pass?
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6ggfergu...the ONLY value of sites like this are advertising. And the only way that has value is when people click on ads. Compared to Facebook, Youtube, etc. that value is infinitesmal.

    Keep in mind that 99+% of the country has NEVER HEARD of Digg. And less than 1% that have really go here more than a few tyimes before getting board. People want to keep throwing aorund that ridiculous 600,000 membners number to make the site look bigger than it is (which is why they never purge the dead accounts) but if you look at the user list the majority have particpated in anything (digging, submitting or commenting) for less than 3 submissions. In other words, they are people who came, signed up, made acomment or something, and then left and never came back.

    People also want to talk about the page views, etc. and its rank, well the very nature of the site will cause FAR more page views per user than a site like Facebook or even MySpace. In one session the average MySpace user might go to his/her page, and maybe 4-5 of their friend's pages. But in the average session a Digg user goes to the main page, and 10+ comment pages
  • KibibyteBrain, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8I really don't hope they look into "dupe control" as much as a solution for the duplicate story conundrum that has existed since the first online news forums/sites. It would be nice to find a solution so that those who refresh digg every 2 seconds to read 100% of the stories won't freak out the 3rd time a story is posted, while more moderate users can enjoy "days old" news of interest.
  • spect3r, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5then move to a different news source ....
  • ibjhb, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4@blizzmax

    Yeah, but if he is using services like My Yahoo, etc, then it would show up as their IP in Digg's logs and not the user.
  • deanlowe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Then what, you'll pay for the salaries, equipment and bandwidth?
  • chriskzoo, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6There are ads on Digg? AdBlock FTW!
  • tylerdurdenclub, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Yeah, exactly. Getting traffic is the easy part. Getting paid is the hard part.
  • xienze, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3First off, the jury's still out on whether or not YouTube is profitable. As of right now, it's just costing Google money.

    Secondly, the fact remains that if Digg isn't raising a suitable amount of money from its advertising revenue right now, then it hasn't demonstrated that it's capable of generating profits, now has it? Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I prefer not investing in a business until it's proven that it can generate revenue. YouTube and MySpace are, right now, pure speculation. Digg's $8.5 million is quite a speculative investment as well.
  • RockMyMonkey, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3People keep saying that because geeks don't click on an ad that there is no money in it. This is just not true! Internet advertising is not just about clicks because Google says so. For example: I run a music website. If a record company puts an ad on my site for a cd that is coming out, does it matter if a kid clicks that ad? Not at all, because that kid can go to the brick & mortar store to buy it after the ad on my site informs him of the cd being available.

    The same goes for Digg advertisers. Some company wants you to know about their "Widget". So they advertise on Digg to get the word out. It's not about clicks...it's about getting a message out.
  • dclowd9901, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"I'd like to see a feature on Digg that disallows submission with title says it all."

    But then, you'd be out of the job, buddy.
  • xienze, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2It looks like we both agree that Digg, YouTube, MySpace, and all the other Web 2.0 sites are pure speculation. And yes, the founders have made tons and tons of money. But is this what business has come to? Make a site that gets lots of visitors but is highly unlikely to turn a profit and hope some short-sighted corporation buys you out for a ridiculous sum of money?
  • bunni, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2What the ***** is wrong with you?
  • spirkster, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2KibibyteBrain -- your comment made me think of tailrank, techmeme, etc -- maybe on the back-end, digg could be checking out the content/linking of the articles get digg'd and aggregate the articles that are the same (and maybe reject articles that link to an article already submitted).
  • titlesaysitall, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@dclowd9901, well if only for a little while and it says error: titlesaysitall has banned your submission or something like that.
  • paulmdx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2For Google and News Corp those companies are speculation. For the *founders* of those companies it's now hard cash.

    I agree they're not profit-making solid businesses, but with the lust for rapid growth of IT companies, a lot aren't. That doesn't mean to say they can't generate profit for the right people.

    Investing $8.5M into Digg could well pay off for the investors as well as Jay/Kevin/etc as building up the company would make it a more attractive acquisition. In the reasonably vibrant M&A market we're in, this has got to be a very real option for Jay and Kevin.
  • dmr0240, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2How about a "vote for alternate title" feature? Not only would that take care of inaccurate titles, it would replace dull, uninformative titles with clear and witty ones. This is similar to how Fark users often encounter duplicate stories, then vote the one with the best headline to the front page (except here it seems that it's pretty much random which dupe gets to the front page, which is why we need another solution).
  • TheCount, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"Even then, legitimate Diggers would be quick to bury it, unless it actually contained useful or interesting information. And in that case it wouldn't really be gaming."

    You're assuming everyone is actually reading the articles to determine if something is useful before digging. I am willing to wager that a majority of diggs on the top story are from people who never even read the real article. They read the title, the summary and the comments and decide if it's worth digging from that. It's the reason why so many articles make the front page more for their sensational title than the actual content they link to.
  • paulmdx, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Ever heard the phrase you've got to spend money to make money?

    Look at how much money was poured into YouTube before it was sold for $1.5B (?). To be honest my first thought was $8.5M actually isn't that much.
  • iamdexter, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1many people game Digg, its not a secret.

    http://www.pawas.com/store/category/mbtshoes/
  • Hashiro, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@ggfergu

    Holy Crap! No kidding. I don't do a whole lot on Digg. I read stories, digg the good ones, bury the stupid ones and skip whatever I don't care about and don't comment all that often, but when I did a search for Hashiro, it was the 3rd listed link!

    Digg FTW!
  • ggfergu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I'll agree that a large part of the fluid monetary value of digg is in it's ad clicks, but that doesn't mean that if digg didn't get any ad clicks, that it would be worthless.
    There is value - even indirect monetary value - in getting content (and associated ads) in front of eyeballs. Advertisers want their ads in front of eyeballs, and if digg is where the eyeballs are, then that's where the advertisers will want their ads to be, especially if they are marketing for brand awareness, and not just for immediate conversions.
    It is also readily apparent that digg has become a vehicle to higher organic search rankings for the sites that it links to. I'd say that there is incredible value in controlling that vehicle.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1As you say, all that has to be done is remove the ID of the submitter for a number of hours (I'd prefer 24, thats enough to make sure a story isn't automatically frontpaged) after each story is submitted.
    Sure, the friends thing would still generate a lot of diggs, but it would be pretty damn obvious and those that constantly digg a friend's stories could have their digg 'value' adjusted when doing so.
    The top 10, 50, 100 whatever, are there because at some stage they were submitting content that many people liked and dugg, thats not the same as what some of them might be doing now though.
  • brundlefly76, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Well, considering its been around for a year and has been burning investment capital without a dime of profit...not much, standalone, at least.
    I would argue that the page format of digg is actually worse for CTR then most sites.

    They need to sell to a portal which can leverage the traffic into network monetization.
    If you have a million users and cant make a profit after a year, you need to sell.
    If anything, the additional capital is just to stall for a better acquisition deal then they have already been presented with.
  • neoform, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Sweet, now the digg team can increase their salaries! (what else are they going to do with the money?)
  • hackwrench, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Borrowing a page from programming, this story needs to be refactored. This story clearly wants to be at least two stories, one on Digg raising funds and one on Digg rejecting evidence it has been gamed.
  • mbabauer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I love Digg, but how exactly is it making money? I just don't think banner adds are enough to pay for what I can only imagine is massive bandwidth costs. I know they can't be hemorrhaging as much money as youtube was, but its got to cost some serious smack to host this site.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1digg fb myspace are all nothing. think about how much a site like google is worth :-P
  • mutatron, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4I don't see how you could be gamed, unless they simultaneously paid a bunch of people to digg up an article they had paid someone to submit. Even then, legitimate Diggers would be quick to bury it, unless it actually contained useful or interesting information. And in that case it wouldn't really be gaming.
  • phlux, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"With smarter then average user like Digg has..."

    How ironic.

  • dweeb79, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Digg is the future
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1But everyone also diggs stories about the latest attempt from Bush and his cronies to ***** with our civil liberties and so forth, we certainly wouldn't want adverts related to Bush popping up would we!
  • vanzan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I will not ask for an office. I can work as security boy! is that good enough?
  • playerslight, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Your entire post made my head hurt. I think you should spend less time surfing the net and more time walking your ideas around in public so that real people can tell you how little sense they actually make.

    If you've indeed spent 28 years online, then I salute you. I've never met one of the ARPAnet founders, and it's an honour.
  • littlebylittle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Kevin. Go ahead and buy a sofa.
  • Haplo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1IP address has been mentioned, however, I and my partner are both behind a router. The outside world sees one IP address. So in short, "IP address = unique visitor" isn't the answer. People with dial up, that get disconnected and reconnect might get a different IP, and yet they are no 2 users.

    With webstats it's often common to regard the same IP address in a time frame as one user though. As soon as the visit is (timewise) too far apart, it's counted as two.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2@ Einze Great comment. Nobody has a clue how to make a dime with a site like digg. All I see is alot of hits and even more hype.
  • bunni, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Yes, and no. Remember Digg doesn't host any of the stories, videos, podcasts, or ads. If you're in Firefox check out any digg page with View -> Page Style -> No Style. It's nothing but css rendered text - your browser does all the heavy lifting.
  • MusicalGenius, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Doesn't anyone think it's weird that the person who made this felt the need of explaining what Digg is in the description area?
  • kschembri, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1You don't even want to know how much money this site is worth :P. Besides, what the hell are they going to do with 8.5 million? Beats me. Not marketing that's for sure.
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