In the summertime of 2005, Alexis Ohanian, a tech entrepreneur, despatched an electronic mail to his colleague Steve Huffman with an ominous topic line: “Meet the enemy.”
The physique of the e-mail contained only one line — a hyperlink to Digg, a community-focused social message board the place folks shared and mentioned information articles and hyperlinks to different websites they discovered attention-grabbing. Mr. Ohanian and Mr. Huffman, who had based the same effort known as Reddit, set their aggressive sights on Digg and its founder, Kevin Rose.
Within the 20 years since, these entrepreneurs have gone onto different tasks and, in true Silicon Valley vogue, dipped into different components of tech. Alongside the way in which, Digg, which went from in style to not, all however died.
On Wednesday, Mr. Rose introduced that he had purchased again Digg for an undisclosed sum from Cash Group, a digital media firm, and would rebuild it to tackle Reddit. And he’s doing it with an unlikely ally: Mr. Ohanian.
“That is the right time to revisit this concept with recent eyes,” Mr. Rose, 48, now a enterprise capitalist at True Ventures, stated in an interview. He stated social media had change into so ubiquitous that “it doesn’t have to be winner take all,” including that “we don’t have to take down Reddit to win.”
Mr. Rose and Mr. Ohanian, 41, are relaunching Digg when social media is in tumult. Elon Musk, who purchased Twitter in 2022 and renamed it X, has turned the platform right into a mirror of himself. Meta, which owns Fb and Instagram, is changing into extra video-focused to compete with TikTok. And Reddit, which went public a yr in the past, has added gamelike options to nudge customers into spending extra time on the location — and extra time taking a look at promoting.
Amid this upheaval, Mr. Rose and Mr. Ohanian sensed a possibility to reinvent Digg in a manner that would minimize by way of a number of the pitfalls of contemporary social media and give attention to “connection and humanity” on-line.
“The world has modified a lot up to now few years,” Mr. Ohanian, who left Reddit’s board in 2020, stated in an interview. “When Kevin advised me he was shopping for again Digg, there was part of me that thought, ‘Effectively, rattling, might we do it once more?’”
Not way back, Digg was on prime of the world. Based in 2004, it was amongst a category of early social information websites, similar to Slashdot, del.icio.us and Reddit, that relied on a group of unpaid customers to curate articles or matters of curiosity from throughout the online. Digg stood out for its strong person base of energetic contributors, who recurrently returned to the location.
The corporate raised tens of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} and fielded acquisition affords from Google and others. In 2006, Mr. Rose posed for a now-infamous photograph on a BusinessWeek cowl, sporting a large grin and giving two thumbs up, with the headline “How This Child Made $60 Million in 18 Months.” (Mr. Rose hated the photograph.)
The duvet proved in poor health fated. Digg later launched a redesign of its web site that its group extensively rejected. Customers ultimately left in droves, as did executives. Mr. Rose left Digg in 2012. That very same yr, the corporate was divvied up and sold for parts to Betaworks, LinkedIn and The Washington Put up.
In distinction, Reddit turned a viable enterprise. Mr. Huffman, who had left the location for different tasks, returned in 2015 and stabilized the corporate. Now 41, he has made Reddit’s as soon as laissez faire content material moderation insurance policies extra stringent, main advertisers to embrace the location.
A few of these adjustments generated a backlash. Some Reddit moderators of “subreddits,” the boards devoted to matters like guitars or basketball or cute puppies, stated they felt uncared for by administration. In 2023, hundreds of subreddits went dark after a number of government selections upset moderators, threatening Reddit’s enterprise.
Seeing the uproar, Mr. Rose, who had dabbled in investing and different start-ups, determined to behave. He was itching to get again to his roots in social and group websites, he stated, and all the time regretted the way in which issues had ended with Digg.
“I look again on how that firm was run, and I used to be simply very fearful to face up for myself in a whole lot of instances,” Mr. Rose recalled. “I simply didn’t have the maturity to exit and ask the robust questions.”
Mr. Rose started laying the groundwork for a Digg comeback. He ran 1000’s of {dollars}’ price of focused adverts throughout Reddit with detailed questionnaires for moderators, asking concerning the largest difficulties overseeing subreddits and different points. He ran the outcomes by way of a synthetic intelligence program to think about new methods for addressing the issues.
“These moderators are pouring their lives into this,” he stated. “We expect we are able to do it higher.”
He additionally reached out to Mr. Ohanian, with whom he had bonded over the scars of working their platforms. Mr. Ohanian stated he had “all love” for his former firm. “On the finish of the day, Reddit was an enormous a part of my life,” he stated.
Mr. Rose and Mr. Ohanian raised an undisclosed quantity of funding to repurchase Digg and to construct a brand new model of the corporate. Their buyers embody True Ventures, the place Mr. Rose is a accomplice, and Seven Seven Six, a enterprise agency based by Mr. Ohanian.
Additionally they employed fewer than a dozen engineers and designers for the brand new Digg and introduced on Justin Mezzell, a longtime collaborator of Mr. Rose’s, to be chief government. Mr. Rose and Mr. Ohanian will be a part of Digg’s board, with Mr. Rose as chair.
Invites to the brand new Digg will probably be distributed within the coming weeks, they stated, and the location will primarily be aimed toward folks on cell gadgets. A.I. can even play a bigger half in making Digg extra accessible to customers, Mr. Rose stated. As an example, he stated, a group of science-fiction lovers might have their discussions translated into Klingon, the language utilized by the “Star Trek” alien race of the identical identify. A.I. instruments may assist scale back spam, misinformation and harassment, he stated.
Much less glamorous — however maybe most essential — will probably be their consideration to moderators. Mr. Ohanian and Mr. Rose stated they wished to empower moderators with higher instruments to assist keep on-line communities, which retains the location welcoming to customers.
“What we by no means targeted on is the again finish,” Mr. Ohanian stated, referring to the instruments and options that moderators lean on. “Nevertheless it’s the again finish that actually, actually issues.”
The preliminary response to Digg’s relaunch could also be muted, Mr. Rose stated, with some folks prone to see the resurrection as a cute nod to a retro model of the social net. However he has grand plans, he stated.
“As a result of there are such a lot of giants on this area which can be going to be sluggish to maneuver, it signifies that we could be nimble,” Mr. Rose stated. “We received’t have all the things we would like Digg to be on Day 1. However a yr from now, we will probably be having a really totally different dialog.”
