How did we miss this in December? Kevin Rose, the cofounder of Digg, served as the answer to a question on ABC's Who Wants to be a Millionaire, and the show in which his name appeared is rerunning now on KGO. Sarah Lacy, the BusinessWeek columnist whose upcoming book prominently features Rose, spotted the mention. If you didn't tune in, YouTube has a replay:
According to our admittedly unscientific poll, 62.3 percent or readers said they wouldn't mind if publishers wheeled and dealed their way to the front page of social news sites like Digg, Yahoo Buzz, and Reddit. The news bodes well for Yahoo. Buzz is meant to lure websites into Yahoo's ad network; Yahoo will then take a cut of the ad revenue generated when Buzz send traffic to those sites. It's all part of Yang's grand promises to shareholders made to counter Microsoft's acquisition bid.
Last week, Digg CEO Jay Adelson wasted no time debunking rumors that Google, Microsoft and two media companies were bidding $200 million or more to buy the social news site. It's too bad, because last week would have been a good time for Adelson and Digg cofounder Kevin Rose to sell. According to metrics firm Hitwise, traffic Yahoo's Digg competitor, Buzz, sends to news and media sites nearly caught up with the traffic Digg sends in just one month.
If you make your living publishing content on the Internet, you live and die by the pageview. One way to drive huge amounts of traffic to your site is through "social news" sites like Digg. If I write something interesting, the theory goes, someone may submit my article to Digg. If it gets enough votes, it hits the front page and I suddenly have enough money to buy a new hibachi. The reality: I often submit stories I've written myself, or get friends to do it, and I then harangue coworkers to vote for my story on Digg. Digg has been making it harder to score this way by detecting how "diverse" your voters are. If it's the same old gang Digging your story every time, you get downgraded. But there is one virtually foolproof way to beat the system: throw tons of traffic at your Digg link.
I've always loved to watch Mark Cuban dance — but Tuesday night I got to see the billionaire booty-shaker up close. The venue: PureVolume Ranch in Austin, Texas. The occasion: The Bigg Digg Shindigg, South by Southwest Interactive's closing party. "You guys always picked the worst photos of me," Cuban said. Mark, as I said at Sunday's panel on gossip, I live to serve. Digg packed PureVolume's dance floor and backyard tents with hundreds of partygoers. Besides Cuban, Moby was there, as were Digg CEO Jay Adelson and cofounder Kevin Rose, iLike CEO Ali Partovi, StumbleUpon's Garrett Camp, and Automattic's Matt Mullenweg. RealNetworks CEO Rob Glaser had just flown in from Florida on a private jet. But for me the most interesting person was newly hired Digger Aubrey Sabala, who put the party together in three days — after Digg had given up on the idea.
Do not want fail? Why then, can has win, say the folks behind the curtains at Flickr, Digg, Media Temple, and StumbleUpon. Six of them showed up at a panel organized by Kevin Rose to explain how to make websites that stay online, more or less. Being a not very clever gossip, I just listened in for the quips. Oh, and the drama. Automattic founder Matt Mullenweg almost didn't make it. Check out how his fellow panelists updated the lineup right before he showed up.
Digg founder Kevin Rose typically cites "the need for diversity" when questioned or criticized about the promotion algorithm that controls what stories make it to Digg's front page. "One of the keys to getting a story promoted is diversity in Digging activity. When the algorithm gets the diversity it needs, it will promote a story from the Upcoming section to the home page. This way, the system knows a large variety of people will be into the story." Oh, really? A Digg submission linking to headline aggregator Fark.com received over 1,000 diggs but still hasn't been promoted to the front page. The problem? The submission is 11 days old. Why are old stories so penalized? If there is a significant surge in Diggs on a story, it should be promoted to the front page just like any other upcoming submission. So much for the vaunted "algorithm."
Click to viewOver the weekend, first Digg CEO Jay Adelson and then, more believably, BoomTown's Kara Swisher debunked the rumors that Google and Microsoft are in a bidding war to buy Digg. But nobody believes Digg isn't actually for sale. So Gawker Media conceptual artist Richard Blakeley decided to illustrate the typical Digg power user for potential buyers. 13 signs you may be a Digg power user, below:
Some enterprising young lad submitted Fark.com to Digg — eight days ago. Fark predates Digg by several years. It has elements of social news like Digg, but it's more in the spirit of the Daily Show than Digg's Slashdot-inspired tech obsessions. Submitter "topsyturvy" described it on Digg as "Fark: the not news news — News that doesn't matter. Not even sure if half of it is true, but it's funny." As of this morning, it had only garnered four Diggs. But that's not the saddest thing of all.
A Digg sale might happen soon, to Google or Microsoft, says Michael Arrington. Cofounders Jay Adelson and Kevin Rose have made no secret of their disinterest in running a big company or going for an IPO. That leaves no exit but a sale, which Digg's bankers at Allen & Co. have been working on for months. This latest rumor could be just another trial balloon. Or it could be the beginning of the end. If not to Digg, then to a drama-filled life as an independent concern perpetually for sale. (Photo by briancaldwell)
As far as Digg users are concerned, Ron Paul, Steve Jobs and slobbering dogs have nothing on Britney's latest baby. Digg and StumbleUpon users click most on stories related to celebrity gossip, videogames, and online clips, according to clickstream data from metrics firm Hitwise. Digg accounts for half of all visits to to news aggregators. eBay's StumbleUpon comes in second with 24 percent of the market. Conde Nast-owned Reddit takes third place.
I like Digg: sometimes I find good links there. However, the people who claim that "social masses are the future of news" are barking up the wrong planet. The masses are stupid. A flash game with an animated Hillary Clinton falling through bubbles got more than 4,000 diggs yesterday. Now, that's nothing compared to a slobbering dog, but it received more votes than most stories on Digg did yesterday. Social news sites reflect the true interests of their readers, and that rarely maps to what's on the front page of the New York Times. Strangely though, the falling Hillary mesmerized me for more than 10 minutes. I guess I'm stupid, too. Catch a video of the companion site, a falling George Bush, after the jump.
Yahoo plans to launch its Digg competitor, Yahoo Buzz, tomorrow. After that, a tipster tells us, Yahoo VP Tapan Bhat and his Front Page/Front Doors group will have three months to prove the project's worth. If it's not driving significant traffic to publishers in Yahoo's ad network by then, EVP Jeff Weiner will shut it down. (Assuming he's still with the company.) Our source isn't optimistic, telling us "Buzz will launch with all hat but no cattle."
It seems obvious that Web 2.0 is not as citizen-generated as people would like to believe. So obvious that Slate's recent article, "The Wisdom of the Chaperones," seems too mainstream for the usually contrarian site. Writer Chris Wilson imagines that Digg and Wikipedia are still seen as radical examples of the wisdom of the crowds, and reveals that they're run by a small base of power users. Of course, Slate is wrong. Call it banal, but the user-written news site and encyclopedia really are the work of thousands, even millions of casual users.
Digg founder Kevin Rose turns 31 today. Google might think you're only 30, but we can do the math. Happy 31st, Kevin! We hope you find this post even more heartfelt than the 13 birthday wishes you got on Facebook — oh, and Julia Allison says happy birthday, too. Now Kevin, I have a rich uncle who's looking to invest some money. Can you fill me in on Digg's secrets? (Photo by AP/San Diego Zoo)
Acquiring Digg costs $300 million, we hear. Learning how to game the social new site, however, only costs the time to write an offer. At last night's Founders Club party in New York — well-attended by executives from CBS, NBC, Disney, and IAC — one media suit inadvertently confessed as much. "Digg traffic is crucial for us," this exec said. So his team called Digg to ask how it all works. What can they do to get more items on the front page? "And they just started giving us all this really detailed information we never expected," this exec was overhead saying. Like how to avoid triggering the algorithm's ire by not having everyone in the company Digg a story until after a certain amount of Diggs, he said. "Only later we realized — oh yeah — it's cause we're talking about buying them."
