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Why no one should buy Digg, from a Digger

wisdump.com — I ’m a big fan of Digg and have been for a while. Of all the websites out there they are probably the highest mentioned one on this site over the past six months. During that time there is always speculation that someone is close to buying them up and in all honesty I came to a realization today that nobody should buy Digg.

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  • Ascendant, on 10/12/2007, -5/+71But... then... how is that kid in the headphones supposed to make his 60 million dollars?
    • simplenation, on 10/12/2007, -22/+11for those that don't know

      http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/05/BusinessWeek_cover_14_Aug_2006.png

      robert kevin rose
    • tastypastry, on 10/12/2007, -2/+28Digg will eventually "sellout". And you can't blame them, it cost a lot of money to run this site. Theres a reason why Kevin and everyone else behind Digg is so focused on this site, because they hope it will make them a lot of money, and thats what running your own business is all about.
    • ImTheDarkcyde, on 10/12/2007, -10/+34another picture from an earlier article:
      http://images.wikia.com/uncyclopedia/images/thumb/4/42/Krose.jpg/459px-Krose.jpg
    • adidax, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4I give Digg less than 5 years. By that time, investors are going to start wanting their money back. Despite what may have happened pre-1998, VCs and angel investors do not just give money away for free. They are usually looking for ~5 to 10x return. So unless Digg turns around and starts making money soon (the ads are probably not going to cut it) they will be forced to sell or put forth an IPO, which can be just as bad.
    • kevinmotel, on 10/12/2007, -9/+5yes. lets help kevin out. everyone click on the ads! give them some revenue!
    • TopBanana, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8@kevinmotel

      Click fraud won't help anyone
    • mtownand1, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2*shreds huge novelty check for 100 mil*
    • electrosoccertu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1He's supposed, to learn how to use. His, punctuation the right, way. Dammit.
    • 0crabby0, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Digger? I prefer Deegro
    • fredinator, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1the problem wwith ads on digg is that most people use adblock. if u dont u should.
    • OBKenobi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I'd buy Digg for a $1.

      IBDFAD

      (See: Robocop)
  • marcuschi, on 10/12/2007, -7/+39Well, now is the best time to sell. With Digg becoming so saturated with fake diggers, spam, copycats, and duped stories, it's hard to appreciate the same value it once had. Like with anything revolving around social atmospheres (as stated in the Tipping Point), going beyond a certain number of people poses a disconnect amongst groups and soon everyone will either clump to smaller more niche groups or disband all together. So it's probably best to sell, use the money to invest in newer technologies and ideas, and repeat the cycle. I agree, Digg isn't about money. Digg has so much power and potential to utilize the knowledge and resources of everyday people. Coming from a designer/strategist's standpoint, I'm constantly amazed at how quickly I can follow trends from Digg. It's like getting a glimpse of the present and future, 20 minutes a day. When the James Kim story broke, all sorts of people became detectives for a day, employing Google map skills, setting up charity blogs, and offering whatever knowledge they had to shed some light on the mystery at the time. Digg became a living, breathing social entity... like a Web 2.0 Captain Planet. =) But, unfortunately, with all great things there's great responsibility. And I believe Digg has grown too big to manage. Kevin Rose and the Digg team have pioneered the Digg/news-democratization model, but now it's up to them to push that standard to create something new. I say sell it to those sucker corporations. Let them destroy it like they always do. But let a new innovation be born. We will always be the generation to say, "I'll sell you this idea because I've got something better." Digg is history in the making. Let's never forget that. And by selling, they'd be immortalizing it.
    • estvir, on 10/12/2007, -5/+85Use paragraph breaks, please, think of the children.
    • Ascendant, on 10/12/2007, -6/+1marcushci, I agree with estvir about the paragraph breaks but I agree with you here. It remains to be seen if digg can persist as a website that is what we think of it today- however, I think it's made a big enough impression on most of us that we would remember it fondly whatever happens to it.
    • vaguelyrandom, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4"Digg isn't about money"

      Not for you perhaps, and i am sure Kevin does enjoy his job and it isn't *just* about money, but it is about money. Would digg have come into being if money ultimately wasn't a factor?

      You also seem to expect a place like this to remain pure and clean, that somehow only the good eggs will come and no-one will try to spam/shamelessly promote their sites, etc...

      I don't like to call people naive, but there are some sides of humanity that will never go away. Wishful thinking and remembering times gone by as better than they proabably were is another one of them.
    • muikano, on 10/12/2007, -7/+1digg.com is a technology more than it is a website. I would love to see digg spinned out as a government service. Every citizen with an account on usa.gov or something. It would give politicians the exact view of what america wants.

      Of course, you would need something like IPv6 and static i.ps for every household but yeah, it would really work. Not to mention, licensing digg technology onto forum software--if it's scalable. There's a lot of profitable ways you can spin digg.

      Look at the podcasts section, in no time at all, it overtook podcastalley as the preferred place to look for new podcasts. But looking at the top podcasts there, I think digg has some growth problems. The digg audience is till too much tech geek and not enough cazzies. (casuals)
    • malavalla, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4here is a idea guys, lets all chip in i got six dollars, ahh ***** it lets get a pizza
  • GaffleSnipe, on 10/12/2007, -1/+26"Who is to say that Yahoo wouldn’t buy Digg and start to plant articles that shine them a in a brighter light than Google?"

    Uh . . . those stories would probably get buried anyway.
    • sockpuppets, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9If you own the technology that's a fairly easy fix. There's already "algorithms" in place doing strange things on Digg. I'm still researching but will post about it soon.
    • clubmasta2, on 10/12/2007, -9/+3If Yahoo bought digg I'd never come back, in fact if Digg changed at all I'd never come back. I've already considered just slashdotting instead of both. This site has seriously gone downhill...anyone who would buy it for 60 million dollars would more than lose it even after 5 years...this site has little potential and I have no idea who in their right mind would value it anything above a few million...even that would be quite the risk.
    • JQP123, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4The premise of the article is that digg shouldn't be sold because it could become biased.

      All media is biased in one way or another and digg is no exception. By reading digg, an alien from another world could justifiably conclude that Ubuntu is the most popular computer operating system on this planet. And who's to say that the ranking algorithms aren't already tilted to reflect someone's personal viewpoint? Has anyone seen the code?
    • autodata, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I really have to wonder about anyone who hasn't realized that digg is already completely infested by spam and astroturfing, both of which make up a large percentage of front page articles.
    • 0crabby0, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I think Wikipedia should buy Digg - nice and neutral...
  • radicalone2009, on 10/12/2007, -14/+1more on the retards at digg.com

    http://virtualmagic.blogspot.com/2006/07/delve-into-digg.html
  • radicalone2009, on 10/12/2007, -14/+1http://virtualmagic.blogspot.com/2006/07/delve-into-digg.html
  • ImTheDarkcyde, on 10/12/2007, -3/+39shut the hell up about digg already, i'm getting sick of these masturbatory articles
  • aceslick911, on 10/12/2007, -5/+6No dream lasts forever
    • thewump, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7Why not?
    • leftfield, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7because you wake up and realize you are a butterfly.
    • sockpuppets, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9I woke up but I'm just wet and sticky. :(
    • kb0x, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8That will teach you to sleep in a bath full of custard.
  • danielrh9, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8I for one would no longer visit Digg if it were owned by some media conglomerate. I visit here to get away from that. If Digg is owned by anyone other than Digg, it ceases to be Digg.
  • tshawkins, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10If yahoo where to buy digg, they would treat it as they have every other recent system they have bought, bring the hosting inhouse, to improve availablity and reliebility, maybe enable yahoo id login, and add "digg it" links to yahoo media pages. Yahoo is not stupid, they wont buy a property and then try to change it, they will grease the wheels and provide the support only a big company can bring, but they are not going to shell out millions for a property and then try to change from the very thing that made it sucessfull.
  • chriskzoo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Here's the fallacy of your argument - you aassume that the same sort of "story pushing" doesn't already happen with the owners of digg? Look at Kevin's profile and tell me how many stories he's dugg have not been frontpaged?
    • mille716, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Thats more likely because so many of Kevin's fans check out his profile and see what he's digging. Doesn't mean he's forcing them on the front page.
  • c0sm0, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0let these guys make some cash, if not for the simple reason that they've gotten so many more people to consider news stories (for better or worse) and then they've gotten eveyone to TALK about this news...
  • FenBar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Yahoo bought Flickr and Upcoming, which I use everyday, and personally I've seen nothing but improvements (save for a few annoyances). And let's face it being bought out is the dream for the creators of sites like these.

    However, I'd definitely agree that when giant companies buy up sites like Digg it does leave me with a "dirty" feeling.
  • mille716, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Does anyone know how much revenue Digg makes from the google ads? Its gotta be quite a bit if Digg has now in the top 20 websites. Although I don't like it, I'd be willing for Digg to expand those (just a bit though) if it would allow Digg to remain independent.

    I've always been appreciative of how transparent Kevin Rose has been with the Digg community. It be nice if we could get a comment from Kevin about Diggs future plans sometime soon.
  • leighj, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Running a for-profit business (and even some not-for-profit organizations) means to make a buck, NOT make friends, influence people or maintain integrity or any other MORAL issue. It doesn't exclude doing those because they DO help but at the end of a day when you work a job you do it to make MONEY. If you don't like a business find another you like or start your own or STFU.
  • rjodwyer, on 10/12/2007, -9/+2is Kevin rose gay? if so, bye...
    • mille716, on 10/12/2007, -1/+71.) From watching diggnation, I really don't think so.
      2.) You're a homophobe douchebag. Please do go away.
    • kb0x, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4@rjodwyer
      Even if he is gay, He only wants you to visit his site, Not suck his *****.
  • bornholtz, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2Come on... The ONLY reason to start a business is to sell it. Anyone who tells you otherwise isn't a very good businessman. If you don't want Digg to change then maybe you should come up with the money to buy it yourself.
    • DooM, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Uh - how about to own it for profit..? That's at LEAST two good reasons to start a business.
  • markmayhew, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2i agree noone should buy digg, but for a different reason: digg is a dog. Or, maybe for $10K someone should buy this nonsense.
  • HanSolo69, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2well one can only hope that when the time comes for Digg to be bought out, that they hire you as their top advisor. Because i'm sure "dude, that's THE MAN trying to buy you out." will really sway them to your side.
  • farksucks, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5The reason to not buy digg for any serious amount of money is because digg isn't making jack squat from Google adsense ads.

    Kevin himself said they only made 3 million bucks from google ads last year, even though they had 20 million unique visitors per month. With that kind of traffic on a site like cute overload.com or something, you would be making at LEAST 30 million with google ads. Diggs 3 million in adsense revenue didn't even cover the costs of their bandwidth to run this site, he said.. much less salaries.

    The problem is that digg readers either

    1) run firefox with adblock and never see the ads
    2) have learned to "tune out" the google ads and never click on them

    To make money with google ads you need traffic, and you need stupid people who can't tell the difference between a navigation link on your site and a google text ad. The users on digg may not be geniuses, but they're experienced enough to just ignore the ads.

    That's why digg isn't worth much at all. Slashdot has the same problem, btw. Their users are even more hardcore than diggers, and nobody is going to buy slashdot for 500 million dollars either.
    • tshawkins, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1News orientated sites are notoriously difficult to monetise with contextual advertising, its a medium that just does nt work, mainly becuase people are in information seeking mode, not in buying or service researching mode, its a far different proposition from say a shopping site or an auctions/classifieds site,
    • noddyxoi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Some slashdot news are bought. That was implemented some time ago and that is public knownledge.
  • debian_, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3In the earlier months of Digg's life, certainly a quick acquisition by an external entity with a vested interest in the technical oriented core of Digg would have corrupted what has since grown into what Digg is now. At this point however, it would take all the subtlety of a nuclear weapon to "steer" the primary perceived attitude that this website pushes. Even a joint buyout by MS/RIAA/US Republican Party wouldn't shift the consistent spatter of gushing Apple/Google/Web2.0/Digg Circle Jerk stories which dribble down the front page like the end result of Taco bell down the bowl of a toilet.

    You know why no one should buy Digg? The content has gone to hell, being pushed out of the way with the kinda of narcissistic idol worship usually reserved for fanatical cults and fringe religious sects. Gone are the days of golden nuggets of web discoveries, where every other story was actually fresh, meaningful, or held some sort of worth to users with IQs higher then the GB size of their mp3 players. Instead it has become a popularity race between users who submit, resubmit, then resubmit again pages are either media blurbs by major alternative news sites online, or obscure 3 sentence blog posts whose author hopes to cash in via a digg and some adsense.

    Actually, I take back my previous statement. Someone should by Digg. That way, hopefully whatever cash-happy entity that purchased this turd, can finally run it fully into the ground and let this heaping mass of potential gone awry finally be burried as deep as this comment is about to be.
  • lillepalle, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Sell digg to it's users, with a non-profit clause.

    or just make a big party each year using the income, shareholding = access.
  • noerrorsfound, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2WHAT? Oh, you said *digger*!
  • washcapsfan37, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I have no problems with Digg being bought out, as long as whomever does so runs it without a ulterior motive (as expressed above by many, like Yahoo or MS using it to promote positive stories about themselves). Although Digg is run well, I have always had some reservation about how stories get promoted. A story should rise based on the merit of the story, not on some formula or who is submitting/digging it. Let us, the Diggers as a whole, tell each other what is best.
  • eth3l, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2If its media bias he's worried about the game's up. Digg is filled ith liberal, anti-Microsoft, iPod loving fan-boys.
    • kevinmotel, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1i'd say libertarian more than anything else
  • Slipdisc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1sell it. change is good.
  • tedhead2k, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Is this really such an amazing revelation? It's common sense. If a company owns a website, the website's content would be in their best interest. Duh.
  • rowlodge, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2just seems better where it's at. it's like a country within a country, to be taken over by anybody else would make everybody feel as if we were being invaded.
  • anastrophe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3MONEY IS EVIL
    END CORPORATE HEGEMONY NOW
    PASS THE KYOTO PROTOCOL
    FREE MUMIA NOW
    HEY HEY HO HO OLD WHITE MEN HAVE GOT TO GO
    BUSH LIED PEOPLE DIED

    oh, wait. oh - okay. we're talking about digg.com. a website. not a way of life. cool. sorry for the mistake.
  • groperdude, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Digg certainly was not a new idea or technology, but was done right and got initial traction by free advertising. Of course it has an agenda, and i don't think it wants everyone to be happy. It has a niche market of 80% teenage boys, and they have some purchasing power. So, as a businessman myself, i think digg will be sold to someone before Jan 2008, but not even close to $60 million. It would be lucky to get half of that. You can count from June 2006, and reduce $2 million per month till it is not sold. Hence in Dec 2007, it will be worth $24 million. If it is not sold within 12 months, then you can start reducing $3million per month, which according to my calculations, digg will be worth nothing by Dec 2008.
  • groperdude, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1And oh, no one really cares about who owns what. If a site is appealing, people will use it. If it sucks, even google can't save it. Google's own video service is an example of this, and that's why they bought Youtube. Google also scrapped their Answers service. It's about adding some value, and no one really gives a hoot about who owns anything.
  • vroom101, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2In the current Web 2.0 era, Digg.com is a force to be reckoned with. If Founder Kevin Rose is offered a legitimate certified check for $300 million (US dollars) for the site, I suspect he will politely listen and refuse the offer; a $550 million (again US dollars) offer, his heartbeat will pickup significantly, but again he'll probably decline. At an offer to buy Digg.com for $900 million U.S. dollars (cash), he'd probably think that's sufficient for starting the Web 3.0 movement and probably sell Digg.com...

    ...And for the first time in Digg.com's history, there'd be zero activity for a few hours due to the mass fainting of Digg's 600,000+ users because of the sale (and the mental overload of thinking about $900,000,000 in the bank account).
    • ericrous, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1No. If Kevin Rose was offered a $300 million check, he would do the same thing any of us would do. He'd not only take the offer but also drop to his knees and offer a free hummer to the buyer.

      Oh wait, did I say that out loud?
  • sorti, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1digg = the pet rock of the 2000s

    if figg.com came out tomorrow and was 5% better I'd dump digg in a mouse click.

    I'm sure we'll all forget about digg in nothing flat as soon as the next thing for the internet comes out.
  • GorillaButler, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2That article was lame. For paragraphs? Ads in every corner of the screen? Sigh. Digg is great in theory. It's got a great interface, it looks great, and Kevin is improving the sites technology all the time. But it's only as good as its community, and to be frank digg's community (like most unmoderated web forums) has been getting worse and worse. I started reading this site in '05, and since then the stories linked have seriously dropped in quality. As it stands now, digg is a forum for the google generation to discover old hackneyed internet memes while sophisticated users either shrug or post blog spam to game a digg effect and get some add revenue. Last year I stopped visiting fark in favor of digg, but now I find myself going back to fark for funny headlines and entertaining comments.
  • foamweapons, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1It's too bad Digg has investors. Investors want money.

    Digg is also a platform for distributing information, built by a community. Communities want freedom to make the platform their own.

    One day these two forces will collide and Digg will change beyond recognition. It's not all bad though, things change so fast the next new thing will be there to replace Digg when it happens.
  • Sc0rian, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1mate well wrote i dont agree with you.
  • Jay730, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1anything can be monetized
  • michaelwilde, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Agree.. Digg will probably sell out.. why.. because they sold out to VC money... now don't get me wrong.. i don't mean taking VC money is necessarily "selling out"--like people often refer to musicians as having sold out... But while Kevin got it started on a shoe string, it took a shot in the arm by Omidyar and other VCs to make it sing. VC's need their money back, in spades. They generally have three ways to get money back, 1. Go Public, 2. Sell to a larger company for a hefty profit, 3. The company can pay the VC's back... Since "3" isn't likely, and "1" is a long row to hoe, "2" is more likely.

    But, I think digg should try to be a standalone media company. Resist the temptation for exit, be a strong surviving business.. maybe even at some point become a major media outlet. I can see it now Digg would make one hell of a TV channel.. think Current.TV but WAY better.
  • Doobious, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0I like Digg and all, but it seems to me like the ratio of quality content to useless crap is getting lower every day. I first heard about Digg on Slashdot. Now I read both, but I prefer Slashdot's comments 1000 to 1.

    On Slashdot, I read at 3 (with a Funny modifier of -4). I see a lot of great comments that really add value to the articles.

    Digg comments are less about contributing to a coherent and relevant discussion, and more about being the first to say IN SOVIET RUSSIA, WILL IT BLEND! And that sort of crap gets modded up. :-(

    So, Digg has more content, but Slashdot and Something Awful (and others) have much _better_ content. If the purpose of Digg is to dig up the interesting stuff, and bury the lame stuff, then Digg is in trouble. They need to totally revamp their moderation system. And maybe charge a couple of bucks for an account to filter out the n0obs. :-)

    I don't think anyone should buy Digg. I think they should start their own website and fix all the things that Digg gets wrong. Maybe I've said too much...
  • phogasmic, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I love Digg and I appreciate Kevin Rose for putting it together, eventually he should cash in though. I know it will ruin digg because the stink of corprate influence will smell from every post, however Rose built a good product and deserves his pay day.
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