What is Digg?270 Comments
- MrHairy2005, on 06/26/2008, -24/+219If not for Kevin Rose, you wouldn't have been able to post that comment!
- benologist, on 06/27/2008, -10/+199As good as digg is (or could be, rather) I don't think it should be on the list with Larry Page & Sergey Brin, Tim Berner's Lee etc. You can't compare a 'popular' site that's basically just a forum for discussing stupid links to what TBL, eBay, Amazon, Wikipedia etc. have done. Digg's tiny by comparison to them too, it reaches far fewer people and interests even less. Most of the people come in via search engines and leave as quickly as they can, that doesn't describe an enhanced experience.
I don't think Facebook and WordPress deserve mentions either. Facebook is just a better-executed MySpace. WordPress is just a more streamlined way for people to produce pages of crap and that's nothing new.
Some notable names missing too, like Skype, AOL, IMDb. What about some of the big content distribution networks like Akamai? What about browser vendors? What about Linux, Microsoft, Dell, HP, Cisco etc, they're only powering most of the internet.
It's like they started writing a real list and then realised it wouldn't get as many diggs. - wallryan, on 06/27/2008, -2/+99why the hell is the facebook guy so high on the list?
*edit*.....never mind.....apparently the list is randomly arranged....good to know - irfanmp, on 06/26/2008, -23/+109Where's Al Gore? I recall him inventing the Internet. ;)
- synaesthesia, on 06/27/2008, -2/+83I don't see Goatse on that list.
- FuryOfThor, on 06/26/2008, -4/+79Kevin Rose is cool, but eBay and Amazon really paved the way for having profitable internet sales beyond ad clicks. I feel like that's pretty big.
- Meursault, on 06/27/2008, -4/+65Hey, I like Digg and all, but let's not get carried away.
- ToastedZergling, on 06/27/2008, -4/+55Who knew getting drunk & talking technological crap then posting it online could turn out so well...
- jblade, on 06/27/2008, -3/+5415 People Who Changed the Internet (Revised Version)
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When you turn on your modem or connect to a Wi-Fi access, you are already online which allows access to the Internet. I previously wrote a post about this at 10 Young People Who Changed the Internet. However, I have to admit that I made lots of mistakes in that post, and this post is to make up for it. So, here goes:
1. Larry Page and Sergey Brin (Google Inc.)
Perhaps two of the brightest and outstanding billionaires out there, Sergey Brin and Larry Page are one of the world’s most successful Internet entrepreneur/developer ever in history. As the owners of popular web search engine, Google, these two Ph.Ds from Stanford University started in their friend’s garage in Menlo Park, California. Google was first launched on Stanford’s website (google.stanford.edu) and then finally on Google.com as soon as they registered the domain name in 1997. Thus, Google is born and worth at about a staggering $25 billion dollars.
2. Sir Tim Berners-Lee (Created World Wide Web)
Sitting at #2 is Sir Tim Berners-Lee, an Englishman whom the English will be proud of. He is a developer who invented the World Wide Web. Sir Tim Berners-Lee is also the founder of World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) at Massachusetts Institute of Technology which comprises of companies that are willing to create standards and improvements of the Web.
3. Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook)
One of the most admired and successful youngster of this century, this 24 years old Harvard graduate is the world’s youngest billionaire. He founded the online social networking website, Facebook, which has poised threats to leading social networking site, MySpace and has collapsed other smaller sites. Zuckerberg launched TheFacebook (FaceMatch) from his Harvard dorm room in 2004 and started promoting it to all Ivy League schools and some Boston institutions. Soon, he bought over Facebook.com domain name. However, few of his old Harvard friends claimed they hired Zuckerberg to write codes for their website, ConnectU which has the same functions with Facebook. As there are no contracts or whatsoever, the lawsuit was dismissed in 2007. Mark Zuckerberg has an approximate net worth of $1.5 billion dollars.
4. Shawn Fanning (Napster, Rupture)
Inventor of Napster, the first popular peer-to-peer file sharing platform. Shawn Fanning, a computer programmer, developed Napster when he was still pursuing his studies in Northeastern University, Boston. However, due to several lawsuits by music industry-backed sectors, Napster has then become property of Roxio Inc. In December 2006, Fanning developed Rupture, a social networking tool that facilitates profiles and communications of online gamers in World of Warcraft.
5. Kevin Rose (Digg)
Perhaps one of the most respected, Internet idealist and TV show host, Kevin Rose is definitely placed a huge impacts among all Digg users, and his TV shows fans. He used to co-host G4TV’s The Screen Savers (which later renamed to Attack of the Show) and then, left the network in 2005. He also co-founded Pownce and Revision3 besides his popular Digg.com, social-bookmarking website. He created Digg in 2004 by hiring a freelance programmer who Kevin Rose paid $12 per hour through eLance. Kevin Rose later bought Digg.com domain name for $1,200 and then went on to buy larger server space. Digg received an ultra boost of capitals when they received $2.8 million of venture capital from Omidyar Network, Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen and Greylock Partners.
6. Matt Mullenweg (WordPress)
This blog might not even exist if Matt Mullenweg did not invented WordPress, an open-source blogging software. He also founded Automattic, the business behind WordPress as well as famous spam fighter, Akismet. At the age of 24, this young developer quitted his job at CNET to fully focus on developing WordPress’ blogging platform. He firstly invented the core of WordPress ath the age of 19 and as WordPress matures, many bloggers are leaving other blogging platforms to use WordPress.
7. Bram Cohen (BitTorrent)
Bram Cohen is best known as the developer, co-founder and author behind peer-to-peer BitTorrent protocol and its file sharing program. He is also the co-founder of CodeCon and co-author of Codeville. In 2001, he quits his job at MojoNation to work in BitTorrent. He firstly revealed his ideas in a CodeCon conference and started luring beta testers by collecting free pornography. He then spent some time working with Valve, but quits his job later to work in BitTorrent Inc.with his brother and business partner.
8. Pierre Omidyar (eBay)
Pierre Omidyar is the founder of eBay, an online auctioning marketplace that connects buyers and sellers. With a net worth of about $7.7 billion dollars, Omidyar and his wife Pam, are one of those entrepreneurs that go beyonds doing profits, which is by contributing to non-profits organizations and aiding start-ups. He wrote the source code of eBay when he was 28 years old in 1995. Initially, he decided to name his auction site after his consulting firm, Echo Bay but echobay.com was not available. To save up his Internet service provider cost, he registered eBay.com.
9. Mike Morhaime (Blizzard Entertainment - World of Warcraft)
Michael Morhaime is the President of Blizzard Entertainment, a successful computer games company that created the all-popular online gaming fantasy, World of Warcraft (WoW). WoW has over 10 million online gamers, raking Morhaime at least $1.5 billion every year.
10. Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia)
At # 10 is Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia, the online open-content encyclopedia which is founded in 2001. He is also the co-founder of Wikia, a privately own web hosting company set up in 2004. Jimmy Wales firstly started a peer-reviewed, open-content encyclopedia which is Nupedia. He then, utilized the ideas of Nupedia with his “wiki” software to form today’s Wikipedia.
11. Craig Newmark (Craigslist)
Craig Newmark is an Internet entrepreneur that invented the Craigslist. With over 14.1 million pageviews a month, Craigslist.org is one of the most visited website on the Internet. Craigslist is a centralized network of communities, featuring free advertisements and forums on various topics.
12. Chad Hurley and Steve Chen (YouTube)
Chad Hurley and Steve Chen are the founders of super popular online video streaming and sharing website, YouTube. Chad Hurley used to work for eBay’s PayPal in the designing department where he designed PayPal’s logo. Together with PayPal colleagues, Jared Karim and Steve Chen, they founded YouTube in 2005. Google later acquires YouTube at $1.65 billion dollars. Chad Hurley was 28 years old and Steve Chen was 27 years old when they founded YouTube.
13. David Filo and Jerry Yang (Yahoo! Inc)
Yahoo! is also founded by 2 Stanford University’s Electrical engineer graduates, namely David Filo and Jerry Yang. Jerry Yang started by started a list of web pages on the Internet and it was named “Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web”. Then, they decided to switch to Yahoo! and the initial URL was at akebono.stanford.edu/yaho. In December 1994, that particular website had already received over a million hits. Realizing its potential, David Filo and Jerry Yang got serious and diversified Yahoo! as a web portal. David Filo’s net worth is $2.9 billion dollars and Jerry Yang’s is $2.3 billion dollars.
14. Jack Ma (Alibaba)
Sitting at # 14 is Jack Ma, the founder and Chief Operating Officer of the Alibaba Group. He founded Alibaba.com in 1999, which is a China-based business marketplace site that serves international businesses. Alibaba Group then founded TaoBao.com, which is an online auction website that is pretty much similar to eBay and instead of paying through PayPal, TaoBao’s currency is AliPay. Yahoo Inc. then acquires a staggering 40% stakes worth over $1 billion dollars.
15. Jeff Preston Bezos (Amazon)
Jeff Bezos is the founder, chairman of board, president and the chief executive officer of Amazon.com, a major e-commerce company that sells goods through the Internet. His net worth is currently at a staggering $8.2 billion dollars.
That’s all for the Top 15. Any ideas, suggestions or feedbacks are welcome. Just leave me a comment.
P.S. The list is randomly arranged according to who first came into my mind at the time I am writing this post. Thanks - nobodaddy, on 06/26/2008, -0/+37apparently the list is in no particular order.
"P.S. The list is randomly arranged according to who first came into my mind at the time I am writing this post. Thanks. " - thekms, on 06/27/2008, -2/+37Or you could have made some more proactive choices in your life...
- dvsbastard, on 06/27/2008, -4/+39What a coincidence... I work out of your mothers house too..
/Sorry, but you set yourself up for that! - katieedwards, on 06/27/2008, -2/+33"P.S. The list is randomly arranged according to who first came into my mind at the time I am writing this post. Thanks."
- sockpuppets, on 06/27/2008, -8/+37Yeah he would have, it just would have been on reddit.
- bstory, on 06/26/2008, -18/+44How can the guy who started the WWW be sitting behind the Google founders? Without Sir Tim Berners-Lee there wouldn't be an Internet as we know it and there certainly wouldn't be a list like this. I am sure getting tired of people kissing Google's ass.
- Thrilltone, on 06/27/2008, -2/+26I consider myself in the Top 100 Million most influential.
Where's MY prize? - tnoy, on 06/27/2008, -0/+22I wish I could digg you up more than once.
- inactive, on 06/27/2008, -5/+26Reddit started in 2005. Digg started in November of 2004, so I would say that Reddit is a cheap imitation of Digg and wouldn't exist if Kevin hadn't had such a brilliant idea.
- SkullyBocks, on 06/27/2008, -1/+21mirror http://tinyurl.com/4f6pwa
- ericdano, on 06/27/2008, -21/+39Lame. Buried.
- sg7791, on 06/27/2008, -0/+17Don't apologize. I think insulting strangers is one of the finer things in life. Savor.
- LinkGCN4, on 06/27/2008, -1/+18Who created porn?
- bajanmoss, on 06/27/2008, -1/+17Leo Laporte gets my vote.
- langdonalger, on 06/27/2008, -0/+16g4tv's the screen savers?
techtv's the screen savers. - MikeSetera, on 06/27/2008, -4/+20and Global Warm... er CLIMATE CHANGE
- inactive, on 06/27/2008, -1/+16Thankfully the ***** comments have a home here at digg. Thank you Kevin
- inactive, on 06/27/2008, -0/+14I love the original google website
http://web.archive.org/web/19981111183552/http://g ...
at least thats as far back as I can find an archive - Ransack, on 06/27/2008, -4/+18Lame. Obviously made by someone who first joined the internet waaay back in 2005. *rolls eyes*
Digg is a nice site, but its not epic the way google or ebay are.
Whats missing from the list? IRC, ICQ/MSN and the other instant messengers. Also IMDB, which has been on the internet since before the first graphical web browsers. It was the first really awesome website that showed what hyperlinking could really do and be used for. - inactive, on 06/27/2008, -4/+17LOL The only thing Kevin Rose and digg have done was enhance/give more people ADD.
... think about it. - gamben0, on 06/27/2008, -1/+14Since when does WoW = internet? Blizzard shouldn't be on there.
- AudioPhil3, on 06/27/2008, -1/+14Oh, thanks eric.. it's good to be updated on what you think.
- jstack, on 06/27/2008, -6/+18It's disgusting how you all turn into school girls whenever Kevin Rose is brought up.
- MrTito, on 06/27/2008, -0/+12Are you referring to Digg or this article?
- dn11, on 06/27/2008, -4/+16despite your attempt at humor, he should still be there - probably near the top. perhaps you aren't actually familiar with the history of the internet.
- omnis, on 06/27/2008, -1/+12I agree that Digg and Kevin Rose shouldn't be on the list. This site is a result of where the internet is today, not a catalyst.
- dragapply, on 06/27/2008, -3/+13I hope you meant Rob Malda in 1997 (hint: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdot )
- SkullyBocks, on 06/27/2008, -2/+12Grow up...
- ileftfark, on 06/27/2008, -2/+12I like Digg (to a point), but its essentially the same thing as a million other sites (user-generated content) that came before it. Any vBulletin site does the same thing, but for some reason, Digg became very popular. And with a terrible comment system. So Kevin gets credit for that.
- shark72, on 06/27/2008, -1/+10"This blog might not even exist if Matt Mullenweg did not invented WordPress, an open-source blogging software."
Nope. WordPress was a fork of b2. This happened in 2003. By then, blogger.com had been around for four years. Movable Type had been around for at least two. Journalspace, LiveJournal and countless others were already around, too.
It's a fine piece of software, but blogging would certainly exist even if Matt "did not invented" WordPress. - tnoy, on 06/27/2008, -2/+11I completely disagree, I've been using Digg for a while and my ADD hasnt been under this much control since..
- LeRenard, on 06/27/2008, -1/+10Why? Al Gore was a big reason the money was put into researching a global information network. I'm not saying kiss his ass, or claim he invented anything (which he never did) but at least acknowledge he was forward thinking enough to realize it was worth putting some tax dollars into exploring what we could do.
- sfacets, on 06/27/2008, -2/+11Reddit is what Digg should have become. Now it is lolcat heaven.
- Dominicc2003, on 06/27/2008, -0/+9My car doesn't have any money either :(
- inactive, on 06/27/2008, -0/+9Mr. Skin?
- OC73, on 06/27/2008, -2/+10Notice how quick this story made it to the front page?
- sg7791, on 06/27/2008, -0/+8I can't. The fan is on.
- carrtoonist, on 06/27/2008, -0/+7You mean macromedia?
- jlmillstein, on 06/27/2008, -2/+9500 Internal Server Error
Looks like they haven't enhanced it enough - Flashypoo, on 06/27/2008, -0/+7So it's a list of people who made things on the internet. Cool. I guess.
- trueshadow21, on 06/27/2008, -2/+9The female who gave birth to you.
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