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Digg

Digg is a user driven social content website. Everything on Digg is user-submitted. After you submit content, other people read your submission and “Digg” what they like best. If your story receives enough Diggs, it’s promoted to the front page for other visitors to see.

Kevin Rose came up with the idea for Digg in the fall of 2004. He found programmer Owen Byrne through eLance and paid him $10/hour to develop the idea. In addition, Rose paid $99 per month for hosting and $1,200 for the Digg.com domain. In December of 2004, Kevin launched his creation to the world through a post on his blog.

In February of 2005, Paris Hilton’s cell phone was hacked. Images and phone numbers from the phone were posted online and it didn’t take long for a user to post the link on Digg. The rapidshare downloads site started to receive an enormous amount of traffic and it was then, Rose says, he saw “the power of breaking stories before anyone else.”

Digg has been a force ever since. Acquisition offers have been made, Rose was on the cover of BusinessWeek and according to Alexa, Digg is in the top 100 most trafficked sites on the internet. The success hasn’t come without its share of problems though. The site has had to face services aimed at gaming the way stories hit the front page, as well as a user revolt. Digg has however been able to get over these hurdles as it continues to be one of the social news leaders.

Milestones

• 
  Digg added Paul Lathrop as Sr. Systems Engineer. (3/3/08)
  Posted 9/28/11 at 1:31pm
• 
  Digg added Bennett Thuener as CFO. (7/1/11)
  Posted 7/21/11 at 6:21pm
• 
  Digg added Brian Link as VP of Engineering. (3/6/06)
  Posted 4/13/11 at 5:51am
• 
  Digg added Ian Eure as Senior Core Infrastructure Engineer.
  Posted 4/6/11 at 1:34pm
• 
  Digg added Mike Cieri as Product Manager.
  Posted 4/3/11 at 4:58pm
• 
  Digg added Ben Folk-Williams as VP of Engineering.
  Posted 3/21/11 at 12:56pm
• 
  Digg added Arsenio Santos as Director of News Applications. (8/1/08)
  Posted 11/2/10 at 2:38pm
• 
  Digg added John Moffett as CFO. (1/1/05)
  Posted 10/25/10 at 1:29pm
• 
  Digg added Wes Augur as Principal R&D Engineer. (7/1/08)
  Posted 9/16/10 at 12:02pm
• 
  Digg added John Quinn as VP Engineering. (3/1/08)
  Posted 9/7/10 at 9:47am
• 
  Digg added Tyson Rosage as Designer. (10/1/09)
  Posted 8/31/10 at 9:11am
• 
  Digg added Matt Williams as CEO. (8/31/10)
  Posted 8/31/10 at 8:49am
• 
  Digg added Marc Hemeon as Design and User Experience Lead. (9/1/09)
  Posted 8/2/10 at 5:00pm
• 
  Digg added Kurt Wilms as Senior Software Engineer. (2/1/07)
  Posted 8/2/10 at 3:22pm
• 
  Digg added Marshall Clark as Head of Search & User Analytics. (4/1/10)
  Posted 6/18/10 at 9:05am
• 
  Digg added Bill Shupp as Director of News Platform. (2/6/08)
  Posted 6/12/10 at 10:00pm

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Digg

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Website	digg.com
Blog	blog.digg.com
Stage	Live
Launch Date	November 1, 2004
Tags	news, social, community

Digg is a user driven social content website split up into two sections – “Popular” stories and “Upcoming” stories. After you submit content it goes into the “Upcoming” stories section. This is where other people read your submission and “Digg” what they like best. If your story receives enough Diggs, it’s promoted to the “Popular” section and listed on the front page for other visitors to see. This effectively allows the Digg community to choose which stories are the best.

Users can also get involved in other ways. Every story has a “Bury” button to filter out bad links, off-topic content and duplicate entries. Stories also have comment sections where users can discuss the story at hand.

In addition to the site itself, Digg has released real-time Flash visualization tools and a Facebook application.

Digg also has an API that allows other sites to read data but not contribute them.

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Sources

1. Citation Needed []
2. goliath.ecnext.com []
3. marketingvox.com []
4. press release (techcrunch.com) []
5. Digg Raises An Inside Venture Round (techcrunch.com) []
6. Another Digg Exec Is Out: Longtime CFO John Moffett Leaves (techcrunch.com) []