News Aggregator Site Digg Is Returning, With an AI Twist

Digg, the website that launched in late 2004 and for a while was one of the internet’s most popular web portals, is making a comeback. Original founder Kevin Rose has taken back control of the brand after it changed hands multiple times over the years and says Digg will relaunch soon with a new CEO, new AI features, and an unlikely adviser: Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. In its heyday, Digg and Reddit were major competitors.

A new homepage at reboot.digg.com features a Digg upvoting box, which visitors can click on (as of this writing it clocked more than 190,000 clicks) and an email signup box that reads, “Sign up to get early access when invites go live.”

A few months ago, Rose discussed the legacy of Digg, a darling of the Web 2.0 era of the internet with the website The Verge. He said an immature network, trouble scaling and the rise of social media networks like Twitter led to Digg’s downfall. 

“I feel like we could have been the better version of Slashdot and continued to dominate and been a huge, massive tech source. Techmeme Plus Plus or whatever,” Rose said.

He added, “If you can find out who owns Digg, I would love to buy it back from them and turn it back into that old-school homepage. I would heavily lean into AI on this front — AI for vetting and AI for a bunch of different things.”

Need your news in Klingon?

That seems to be exactly what has happened, and the new version of Digg will apparently lean into AI features to help users find content, or view that content in different ways. How different? Maybe seeing it in Klingon, Rose says. 

Digg’s new CEO will be designer Justin Mezzell, and Rose will take on a chairman role for the company.

Digg built its popularity as an aggregator of newsy, funny or simply weird links to content around the internet. It allowed users to share and recommend content and then vote with clicks on whether that content should rise (digg) or fall (bury) in rankings. 

What started as a general directory of web content expanded into areas including tech, business and gaming. In 2012, Digg was sold with the brand going to a company called Betaworks, 15 staff members going to a Washington Post project called Code3 and Digg’s patents going to LinkedIn. 

Even with a relaunch soon after, Digg never returned to its glory days in terms of popularity.