Digg's Revival: A New Chapter in Social Media with AI Integration

The return of Digg, a star of an earlier internet era

In the summer of 2005, Alexis Ohanian, a tech entrepreneur, sent an email to his colleague Steve Huffman with an ominous subject line: "Meet the enemy." The body of the email contained just one line -- a link to Digg, a community-focused social message board where people shared and discussed news articles and links to other sites they found interesting. Ohanian and Huffman, who had founded a similar effort called Reddit, set their competitive sights on Digg and its founder, Kevin Rose. In the 20 years since, these entrepreneurs have gone onto other projects and, in true Silicon Valley fashion, dipped into other parts of tech. Along the way, Digg, which went from popular to not, all but died. On Wednesday, Rose announced that he had bought back Digg for an undisclosed sum from Money Group, a digital media company, and would rebuild it to take on Reddit. And he is doing it with an unlikely ally: Ohanian. "This is the perfect time to revisit this idea with fresh eyes," Rose, 48, now a venture capitalist at True Ventures, said in an interview. He said social media had become so ubiquitous that "it doesn't need to be winner take all," adding that "we don't need to take down Reddit to win." Rose and Ohanian, 41, are relaunching Digg when social media is in tumult. Elon Musk, who bought Twitter in 2022 and renamed it X, has turned the platform into a mirror of himself. Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, is becoming more video-focused to compete with TikTok. And Reddit, which went public a year ago, has added gamelike features to nudge users into spending more time on the site -- and more time looking at advertising. Amid this upheaval, Rose and Ohanian sensed an opportunity to reinvent Digg in a way that could cut through some of the pitfalls of modern social media and focus on "connection and humanity" online. "The world has changed so much in the past few years," Ohanian, who left Reddit's board in 2020, said in an interview. "When Kevin told me he was buying back Digg, there was a part of me that thought, 'Well, damn, could we do it again?'" Not long ago, Digg was on top of the world. Founded in 2004, it was among a class of early social news sites, such as Slashdot, del.icio.us and Reddit, that relied on a community of unpaid users to curate articles or topics of interest from across the web. Digg stood out for its robust user base of active contributors, who regularly returned to the site. The company raised tens of millions of dollars and fielded acquisition offers from Google and others. In 2006, Rose posed for a now-infamous photo on a BusinessWeek cover, sporting a wide grin and giving two thumbs up, with the headline "How This Kid Made $60 Million in 18 Months." (Rose hated the photo.) The cover proved ill fated. Digg later launched a redesign of its site that its community widely rejected. Users eventually left in droves, as did executives. Rose left Digg in 2012. That same year, the company was divvied up and sold for parts to Betaworks, LinkedIn and The Washington Post. In contrast, Reddit became a viable business. Huffman, who had left the site for other projects, returned in 2015 and stabilized the company. Now 41, he has made Reddit's once laissez faire content moderation policies more stringent, leading advertisers to embrace the site. Some of those changes generated a backlash. Some Reddit moderators of "subreddits," the forums dedicated to topics like guitars or basketball or cute puppies, said they felt neglected by management. In 2023, hundreds of subreddits went dark after several executive decisions upset moderators, threatening Reddit's business. Seeing the uproar, Rose, who had dabbled in investing and other startups, decided to act. He was itching to get back to his roots in social and community sites, he said, and always regretted the way things had ended with Digg. "I look back on how that company was run, and I was just very fearful to stand up for myself in a lot of cases," Rose recalled. "I just didn't have the maturity to go out and ask the tough questions." Rose began laying the groundwork for a Digg comeback. He ran thousands of dollars' worth of targeted ads across Reddit with detailed questionnaires for moderators, asking about the biggest difficulties overseeing subreddits and other issues. He ran the results through an artificial intelligence program to think of new ways for addressing the problems. "These moderators are pouring their lives into this," he said. "We think we can do it better." He also reached out to Ohanian, with whom he had bonded over the scars of running their platforms. Ohanian said he had "all love" for his former company. "At the end of the day, Reddit was a huge part of my life," he said. Rose and Ohanian raised an undisclosed amount of funding to repurchase Digg and to build a new version of the company. Their investors include True Ventures, where Rose is a partner, and Seven Seven Six, a venture firm founded by Ohanian. They also hired fewer than a dozen engineers and designers for the new Digg and brought on Justin Mezzell, a longtime collaborator of Rose's, to be CEO. Rose and Ohanian will join Digg's board, with Rose as chair. Invitations to the new Digg will be distributed in the coming weeks, they said, and the site will primarily be aimed at people on mobile devices. AI will also play a larger part in making Digg more accessible to users, Rose said. For instance, he said, a community of science-fiction enthusiasts could have their discussions translated into Klingon, the language used by the "Star Trek" alien race of the same name. AI tools can also help reduce spam, misinformation and harassment, he said. Less glamorous -- but perhaps most important -- will be their attention to moderators. Ohanian and Rose said they wanted to empower moderators with better tools to help maintain online communities, which keeps the site welcoming to users. "What we never focused on is the back end," Ohanian said, referring to the tools and features that moderators lean on. "But it's the back end that really, really matters." The initial reaction to Digg's relaunch may be muted, Rose said, with some people likely to see the resurrection as a cute nod to a retro version of the social web. But he has grand plans, he said. "Because there are so many giants in this space that are going to be slow to move, it means that we can be nimble," Rose said. "We won't have everything we want Digg to be on Day 1. But a year from now, we will be having a very different conversation."

Digg to Make Comeback as Co-Founder Bets on AI-Driven Revival

Digg was launched in 2004 The platform was once called the "homepage of the internet" Digg lost ground after its 2012 sale to New York-based Betaworks Digg founder Kevin Rose has teamed up with former rival Alexis Ohanian to buy the once-popular content aggregator as they bet on an artificial intelligence-powered revival of the platform that once drew around 40 million monthly visitors. Launched in 2004 by a then 27-year-old Rose, Digg was once called the "homepage of the internet" and was a rival to Reddit, a firm co-founded by Ohanian. But the platform lost ground after its 2012 sale to New York-based tech incubator Betaworks. Microsoft's LinkedIn scooped up its most valuable assets, including patents. It has since pivoted to curating news. Rose and Ohanian, who acquired Digg for an undisclosed sum, said on Wednesday they aim to revive the platform by leveraging their social media expertise, restoring its nostalgic early interface. Digg's early model allowed users to "digg" or "bury" content -- an early precursor to how social media platforms surface viral stories today. The duo also plans to use AI-driven curation to curb misinformation and toxic discourse. "Recently we've hit an inflection point where AI can become a helpful co-pilot to users and moderators, not replacing human conversation, but rather augmenting it," Rose said. He added that he had been approached several times over the past years to buy Digg but it "never felt right" before. Invites for the new version will roll out in the coming weeks, as Digg prepares to reenter a crowded social media landscape where smaller players such as Pinterest are jostling for ad dollars and user attention with giants such as Meta. Justin Mezzell, a longtime collaborator of Rose with experience at Google and Facebook, will take over as Digg CEO. The deal is backed by venture capital firms True Ventures, where Rose is a partner, and Ohanian's Seven Seven Six. Rose will be Digg's board chair and key advisor. Ohanian has also joined a bid led by former Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank McCourt to acquire TikTok's US operations. © Thomson Reuters 2025

Digg Returns: Digital Platform Relaunching in Bid to Bring "Good Vibes" Back to Social Media

Lachlan Murdoch Says Fox's Streaming Strategy Is Modest in Scope Twenty years after it was founded, Digg is coming back, in a bid to "bring the fun back" to the internet. Digg founder Kevin Rose and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian are backing the deal, which will see Rose serve as chairman and Justin Mezzell lead as CEO. "When the three of us got together we were like hot damn there's enough here to go cook and create something very unique," says Rose in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. Rose says that the new Digg is in part a reaction to the current state of the web, where chaos and viral content (true or not) often reign supreme. "Digg started in 2004 and the internet was a very different place back then. To watch what's happened with social media and this idea that the microphone can be handed to anyone and oftentimes the loudest person in the room wins, has created a bit of chaos," Rose says. "Some of it's interesting in that we're seeing the true side of humanity in some regards that we didn't get to see before or was tucked away or hidden, but there's also a lot of people that want to connect and share and gather around topics of interest in a way that is thoughtful and constructive and creates real lasting friendships." Mezzell says that the new Digg (look for a preview at SXSW, where Rose and Alex Albrecht will host a special episode of their show Diggnation) will lean on "nostalgia," at least at first. "We're launching with a very limited tool set, and that is intentional," Mezzell says. "And the reason why is we want people who remember Digg to be able to get in and say, 'hey, this feels familiar,' this feels like a different time when it was awesome to log into Digg and be like, 'what are people into today? What are people talking about? What's the fun stuff?'" "But we also know that that is not going to buy us a very long amount of time," he adds. "If we kept it there and kept it only feeling like old Digg, I think that the initial nostalgia bump would be really nice, but within two weeks you'd be like, 'yeah, I think there was a reason we all kind of stopped using it over time.' So there are steps that we're taking to and they're very intentional steps that we have mapped out right now, some of them are strong opinions loosely held, that we think that this is the roadmap that we want to take and that the community is going to shape that dynamic in some big ways." One thing that the new Digg will lean on is artificial intelligence innovations, which will be used to supplement the work of human moderators. "The thing that's interesting these days in terms of kind of restoring some of the original vibes of Digg and making it a more productive and safer place for people to connect is that we have a whole slew of technologies at our disposal now that we just didn't have back then," Rose says. "This stuff is really interesting in that we're finally able to transition this into this world of moderators where instead of them being the janitors and the police, they can hopefully lean on a little bit more of the AI to do this heavy lifting for them so that they can be the director of good vibes and restore a lot of the positive things that came out of social media." "Online communities thrive when there's a balance between technology and human judgment. We're bringing Digg back to ensure that balance exists," adds Ohanian in a statement. "Kevin and I are here to build something better than what social platforms are offering today. AI should handle the grunt work in the background while humans focus on what they do best: building real connections. No one dreams of spending their day hunting down spam or playing content police - they want to create, connect, and build thriving communities. I'm all in on this chapter." Mezzell says that platforms like Reddit and Discord have underscored the desire for digital consumers to engage in smaller more targeted communities, but that the exiting platforms aren't quite meeting their needs. "A really big impetus for us thinking about 'why now?' is at the end of the day the new mainstream is niche," Mezzell says. "I think about my kids and the stuff they're into and there's not the same notion of this is the only thing that exists here, this is what the mainstream is. Now it's like indie is just as big as the larger labels. I mean Anora just won [the Oscar for best picture]." "We're not here just to make a Reddit clone," Rose adds. "It is all about letting these communities come in and say 'hey I am a part of this these are the things that matter to me.' It can be everything from content moderation to the way that the site looks and functions. That should be something that is very flexible and very extendable in a way that has just never been done before. And if we can do that and take the burden off of content moderation and all of the janitorial work, we'll have a new type of arena for people to come in and make meaningful connections, which ultimately is the kind of environment we want to build." And the new Digg will have one more distinguishing feature that Rose, Ohanian and Mezzell hope will separate it from some of the other competitors. While the company has raised enough cash to give it a nice long runway to build off of (terms were not disclosed, though True Ventures and Ohanian's Seven Seven Six are investors), once Digg starts monetizing, it intends to give a part of the economic growth over to the community it forges. "I can say that the ideas that we have around monetization are certainly a lot more in the camp of not turning a blind eye to all the hard work and effort that the community builders and moderators are putting into the system and making sure that they're brought along for the ride," Rose says. "I think it's ridiculous that you can have massive corporations that are being built on the backs of the effort of free labor and not let them have one, ownership in some sense over those communities and two, ways to monetize those communities."

A Digg-Reddit Slugfest Has Web 2.0 Vibes -- With an AI Twist

News that link recommendation platform Digg Inc. would be making a comeback warmed the hearts of many who long for the "old" web -- where sharing felt more organic, more exciting, and definitely less destructive to everything we know and love about the world. Hey, I'm not immune to this nostalgia, either. The site is being spun up again by its co-founder, Kevin Rose, and, curiously enough, Alexis Ohanian, the co-founder of one-time Digg nemesis, Reddit Inc. Ohanian left Reddit's board in 2020 -- and now seems ready to take it on.

Digg, the Former "Homepage of the Internet," Is Back (With Help From AI)

I'm Finally Leaving Google Chrome, and These Are the 4 Reasons Why Digg, which anyone over a certain age reading this may know as the former "homepage of the internet," is coming back. It never actually went away, but it's now back in the hands and being rebooted by its original founder. Digg Is Back, 20 Years After It First Launched Digg is back in the hands of its original founder, Kevin Rose. And Rose is planning to reboot Digg, with some help from Alexis Ohanian, the co-founder of Reddit. Back in the day, Reddit and Digg were sworn enemies, and vying for the same audience. But times have changed. Now, Reddit is well-established, and not going anywhere. But the rest of the social media landscape is a bit of a mess. The press release announcing the return of Digg states that "community discourse has grown increasingly combative, cluttered, and exhausting [and] users are bogged down by misinformation, spam, and the emotional toll of navigating hostile interactions." Leaving room for an alternative. The original Digg allowed users to upvote (digg) or downvote (bury) stories, shaping what rose to prominence and what disappeared without trace. The new Digg is likely to be partly that, but with Reddit-style communities involved too. And AI will be heavily involved, helping moderators focus on things other than menial tasks, helping users sort through content, and (potentially) more creative ventures too. To be clear, Digg may be "coming back," but it never actually went away. At the time of writing, digg.com takes you to the existing homepage, with a mix of news, trending stories, and videos to peruse. The latest, Rose-led reboot hasn't actually happened yet, but is scheduled to start rolling out in the coming weeks. If you want early access to the new Digg, you need to visit reboot.digg.com. Add an email address, and you'll be able to "sign up to get early access when invites go live." And with Rose himself warning that this will be a work-in-progress, don't expect anything mind-blowing at first, with the best features promised to arrive later. Do We Need an Internet Homepage Anymore? The key question is, do we actually need Digg anymore? Whatever form it's packaged in? The internet is a very different beast now than it was when Digg initially launched in 2004. Plus, Reddit already exists, and that has evolved into a hugely important destination for millions of people. To the point that Reddit is an alternative to Google. Even the promised use of AI is a bit of a gamble. While artificial intelligence can obviously be extremely useful in managing menial tasks, moderating communities, and even making improvements to a site as a whole, its success or failure will depend on how it's integrated. Despite my cynicism, as someone old enough to remember the old Digg, I'll be signing up to try the new Digg to find out.

Early Reddit Rival Digg to Relaunch With Focus on 'Humanity and Connection'

Before Reddit there was Digg, which popularized up- and down-votes on online posts. Now the founders of both platforms -- social media veterans Kevin Rose and Alexis Ohanian -- are relaunching the early Reddit rival with a focus on "humanity and connection" they hope will be boosted by the use of artificial intelligence. Rose founded Digg, which launched in 2004 and let people up- and down-vote ("Digg" or "bury") content from users and from sources around the web. At its peak, it had 40 million monthly users -- a high number for the time considering that Facebook only hit 100 million in 2008. Digg was divvied up and sold in 2012, with many of its assets and patents acquired by LinkedIn. Reddit, which launched in 2005 and was co-founded by Ohanian, took a similar approach to let users vote on what they thought was the best and worst content on the site. But much has changed since 2012 -- not just when it comes to advances in artificial intelligence but also how people treat each other online. "The social space online is definitely harsher, it feels like, than it's ever been before," said Justin Mezzell, who will serve as the new company's CEO. "It feels really difficult to connect. I think the platforms have gotten more disconnected. You know, if ever there was a true town hall of the internet, it feels like it has been deconstructed in a pretty big way." Digg's new leaders say they want to use artificial intelligence to "handle the grunt work" of running a social media site while allowing humans to focus on building meaningful online communities. The question, Mezzell said, is how to get people to "show up and have conversations, to learn from each other, to share something they're passionate about and do it earnestly?" Especially when some of today's social media algorithms "exist really just optimize for outrage." Rose said Digg will take a more nuanced approach to content moderation than banning or not banning content, which is a process that can be easy to get around. "There is a world where, you know, you show up in (a) meditation (group) and you're swinging four-letter words all over the place, and you hit submit," he said. And "we come back and we say, hey, you can post this, of course, but only 2% of the audience is going to see it, because the way that the moderator set the tone." "That is unique. That is different. That's not like a hard-defining rule," Rose added "It's more like just sensing the voice and how it fits within the entire ecosystem and the model that's behind the scenes for that community." The new Digg will launch in the coming weeks as a website and mobile app. Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

How to sign up for Digg, the original Reddit

The new Digg landing page is here Credit: Screenshot / reboot.digg.com The social media and bookmarking platform was one of the most popular websites around in 2006, before the boom of platforms like Reddit, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram helped to usher in its obsolescence. But Kevin Rose and Alexis Ohanian are bringing Digg back -- with a relaunch that aims to fix all our problems with modern social media. "The social space online is definitely harsher, it feels like, than it's ever been before," Justin Mezzell, who will serve as the new company's CEO, said, according to the Associated Press. "It feels really difficult to connect. I think the platforms have gotten more disconnected. You know, if ever there was a true town hall of the internet, it feels like it has been deconstructed in a pretty big way." So the company is offering an alternative: A return to the past with a focus on -- you guessed it -- AI. "By combining Ohanian's and Rose's historical knowledge and deep understanding of what has and hasn't worked from their experiences at Reddit and Digg with today's technological advancements - particularly in AI - Digg plans to become an online destination with humanity and connection at its core," the company said in a press release. Digg originally launched in 2004 and was sold for parts in 2012. Its podcast, Diggnation, ran from 2005 to 2011 and was brought back in August 2024. "Online communities thrive when there's a balance between technology and human judgment. We're bringing Digg back to ensure that balance exists," Ohanian said in the press release. "Kevin and I are here to build something better than what social platforms are offering today. AI should handle the grunt work in the background while humans focus on what they do best: building real connections. No one dreams of spending their day hunting down spam or playing content police - they want to create, connect, and build thriving communities. I'm all in on this chapter." The company announced it would be reintroducing the platform during SXSW on March 5 during a livestream of its podcast, Diggnation, and people seem pretty happy. In the comment section of the nearly 1.5-hour livestream of the Diggnation podcast, the comments are overwhelmingly positive -- although this is just a slice of the type of people who would not only watch a livestream of a Diggnation podcast announcement but also comment on it, so take it with a grain of salt. "The world has its issues right now, but having Diggnation back is one of the best surprises for 2025. Love you guys!" one user commented. "This was so fuxing awesome. Can't believe they are actually back," another user said. Digg was the site that originally popularized up-votes and down-votes that are so typical on online posts today. But, despite Digg's pioneering introduction of this feature to internet culture it was the very up-votes and down-votes that led to its downfall in the first place. As ZDNET reported, the site took down the votes after there was a censorship campaign against left-leaning users by users who called themselves "Digg Patriots." People stopped using Digg, went all in on Reddit, and here we are. It isn't live just yet, but you can sign up to get early access when invites go live at Digg's website.

Early Reddit rival Digg to relaunch with focus on 'humanity and connection'

Before Reddit there was Digg, which popularized up- and down-votes on online posts. Now the founders of both platforms -- social media veterans Kevin Rose and Alexis Ohanian -- are relaunching the early Reddit rival with a focus on "humanity and connection" they hope will be boosted by the use of artificial intelligence. Rose founded Digg, which launched in 2004 and let people up- and down-vote ("Digg" or "bury") content from users and from sources around the web. At its peak, it had 40 million monthly users -- a high number for the time considering that Facebook only hit 100 million in 2008. Digg was divvied up and sold in 2012, with many of its assets and patents acquired by LinkedIn. Reddit, which launched in 2005 and was co-founded by Ohanian, took a similar approach to let users vote on what they thought was the best and worst content on the site. But much has changed since 2012 -- not just when it comes to advances in artificial intelligence but also how people treat each other online. "The social space online is definitely harsher, it feels like, than it's ever been before," said Justin Mezzell, who will serve as the new company's CEO. "It feels really difficult to connect. I think the platforms have gotten more disconnected. You know, if ever there was a true town hall of the internet, it feels like it has been deconstructed in a pretty big way." Digg's new leaders say they want to use artificial intelligence to "handle the grunt work" of running a social media site while allowing humans to focus on building meaningful online communities. The question, Mezzell said, is how to get people to "show up and have conversations, to learn from each other, to share something they're passionate about and do it earnestly?" Especially when some of today's social media algorithms "exist really just optimize for outrage." Rose said Digg will take a more nuanced approach to content moderation than banning or not banning content, which is a process that can be easy to get around. "There is a world where, you know, you show up in (a) meditation (group) and you're swinging four-letter words all over the place, and you hit submit," he said. And "we come back and we say, hey, you can post this, of course, but only 2% of the audience is going to see it, because the way that the moderator set the tone." "That is unique. That is different. That's not like a hard-defining rule," Rose added "It's more like just sensing the voice and how it fits within the entire ecosystem and the model that's behind the scenes for that community." The new Digg will launch in the coming weeks as a website and mobile app.

Digg is returning as it's bought by Digg and Reddit co-founders Kevin Rose and Alexis Ohanian

Digg - once known as "the homepage of the internet" - is making a come-back, after being bought by its co-founder Kevin Rose in partnership with Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. It's an interesting move given that Reddit was a competitor who pretty much inherited that "homepage of the web" accolade. Also 'interesting' is the pair's belief that most moderation can be done by AI ... For those not old enough to have used it, Digg was essentially a social news site. Both editors and users could post links, and users would then upvote them ("digg") or downvote them ("bury"). A key feature was that other sites could embed those digg buttons, allowing users to vote on links even without visiting the site itself. Digg was so influential that even larger sites could find themselves unable to cope with the traffic resulting from a link making it to the top of the homepage. The site was essentially killed by a combination of an unpopular update, widespread manipulation, and the growing popularity of Facebook - whose Like and Share buttons proved more popular. In 2012, the company was broken up and sold for parts. The New York Times reports that Digg co-founder has bought the domain and other assets, and is planning to relaunch it with the assistance of Alexis Ohanian. On Wednesday, Mr. Rose announced that he had bought back Digg for an undisclosed sum from Money Group, a digital media company, and would rebuild it to take on Reddit. And he is doing it with an unlikely ally: Mr. Ohanian. "This is the perfect time to revisit this idea with fresh eyes," Mr. Rose, 48, now a venture capitalist at True Ventures, said in an interview. He said social media had become so ubiquitous that "it doesn't need to be winner take all," adding that "we don't need to take down Reddit to win" [...] Their investors include True Ventures, where Mr. Rose is a partner, and Seven Seven Six, a venture firm founded by Mr. Ohanian. They also hired fewer than a dozen engineers and designers for the new Digg and brought on Justin Mezzell, a longtime collaborator of Mr. Rose's, to be chief executive. Mr. Rose and Mr. Ohanian will join Digg's board, with Mr. Rose as chair. It's not known how much they paid, nor is it entirely clear what the USP will be, but The Verge reports that - unlike Reddit - they believe human moderators are largely unnecessary. So much of a moderator's job, Rose says, is just grunt work: fighting spam, reviewing obvious policy violations, litigating pointless fights. "How can we remove the janitorial work of moderators and community managers," he says, "and convert what they do every day into more of a kind of 'director of vibes, culture and community' than someone that is just sitting there doing the laborious crappy stuff that comes in through the front door?" The new Digg, Rose says, will include lots of AI-forward ways to sort through and make decisions on content. The domain is live, and you can register your email address to be given early access once it relaunches. What's your view? Do you think there's a place for a revamped Digg, or has that time come and gone? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

Kevin Rose, Alexis Ohanian acquire Digg | TechCrunch

Here's a blast from the past: Digg, one of the web's early news aggregators, is now back under the ownership of its original founder Kevin Rose. Notably, he's being joined as co-owner by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian (both pictured above). Digg and Reddit were once fierce rivals in the online social news aggregation space, launching within a year of each other some two decades ago. The two platforms enjoyed similar growth trajectories in the intervening years, going through various owners and spin-offs. But Reddit's endurance was notable, and the company finally went public last year in a bumper IPO and its user-growth has continued trending upwards in the following months. Digg, for its part, didn't stand the test of time quite so well. The company was split into parts in 2012 and sold to incubator Betaworks, with LinkedIn and the Washington Post acquiring some of the assets. Digg later raised a strategic round of funding from USA Today owner Gannett, before landing in the hands of digital advertising company BuySellAds, which acquired a majority stake in 2018. Digg never soared to the same heights as Reddit, which is why Rose and Ohanian have now joined forces to "revive" the platform with a "fresh vision to restore the spirit of discovery and genuine community that made the early web a fun and exciting place to be," according to a press release issued today. Rose says he has been approached "at various times" through the years to buy Digg, but he noted that it never felt like the right time. So why now? It's a combination of reasons, according to Rose, who says that the existing social media landscape has become toxic, messy, and riddled with misinformation -- and AI is well-placed to address that. "Just recently we've hit an inflection point where AI can become a helpful co-pilot to users and moderators, not replacing human conversation, but rather augmenting it, allowing users to dig deeper, while at the same time removing a lot of the repetitive burden for community moderators," Rose said. Ohanian, for his part, has dipped in and out of Reddit through the years. He first left the company in 2009 before returning as its chairman in 2014 and then stepped down from the board altogether in 2020. Just this week, Ohanian joined Frank McCourt's bid to buy TikTok's U.S. business. "Online communities thrive when there's a balance between technology and human judgment," Ohanian said. "We're bringing Digg back to ensure that balance exists. Kevin and I are here to build something better than what social platforms are offering today. AI should handle the grunt work in the background while humans focus on what they do best: building real connections." Both Rose and Ohanian have invested in other companies through the years, both as individuals and through institutional funds. This experience has now intersected with True Ventures, which counts Rose as a partner, and Ohanian's Seven Seven Six both investing in Digg. While Rose will serve as Digg's chairperson and advisor, and Ohanian will sit on the board, the new incarnation will be led by CEO Justin Mezzell -- a "longtime collaborator" of Kevin Rose and "seasoned product design leader," according to the press release.. A new version of the Digg platform is touted for launch soon. Invites will be rolled out in the coming weeks.

Reddit, Digg Co-Founders Are Teaming Up to Revive Digg Using AI

Reddit Inc. co-founder Alexis Ohanian has teamed up with former business rival Kevin Rose to relaunch Digg Inc., a platform once dubbed "the homepage of the internet." Rose, who co-founded Digg in 2004 as a social news sharing service, approached longtime competitor Ohanian last year with a pitch: The two could use artificial intelligence to create an alternative to "toxic" and "hostile" social platforms. The new Digg.com will aim to lure back users nostalgic for its earliest interface and an internet that didn't amplify the loudest voice in the room, he said.

Early Reddit rival Digg to relaunch with focus on 'humanity and connection'

Before Reddit there was Digg, which popularized up- and down-votes on online posts. Now the founders of both platforms -- social media veterans Kevin Rose and Alexis Ohanian -- are relaunching the early Reddit rival with a focus on "humanity and connection" they hope will be boosted by the use of artificial intelligence. Rose founded Digg, which launched in 2004 and let people up- and down-vote ("Digg" or "bury") content from users and from sources around the web. At its peak, it had 40 million monthly users -- a high number for the time considering that Facebook only hit 100 million in 2008. Digg was divvied up and sold in 2012, with many of its assets and patents acquired by LinkedIn. Reddit, which launched in 2005 and was co-founded by Ohanian, took a similar approach to let users vote on what they thought was the best and worst content on the site. But much has changed since 2012 -- not just when it comes to advances in artificial intelligence but also how people treat each other online. "The social space online is definitely harsher, it feels like, than it's ever been before," said Justin Mezzell, who will serve as the new company's CEO. "It feels really difficult to connect. I think the platforms have gotten more disconnected. You know, if ever there was a true town hall of the internet, it feels like it has been deconstructed in a pretty big way." Digg's new leaders say they want to use artificial intelligence to "handle the grunt work" of running a social media site while allowing humans to focus on building meaningful online communities. The question, Mezzell said, is how to get people to "show up and have conversations, to learn from each other, to share something they're passionate about and do it earnestly?" Especially when some of today's social media algorithms "exist really just optimize for outrage." Rose said Digg will take a more nuanced approach to content moderation than banning or not banning content, which is a process that can be easy to get around. "There is a world where, you know, you show up in (a) meditation (group) and you're swinging four-letter words all over the place, and you hit submit," he said. And "we come back and we say, hey, you can post this, of course, but only 2% of the audience is going to see it, because the way that the moderator set the tone." "That is unique. That is different. That's not like a hard-defining rule," Rose added "It's more like just sensing the voice and how it fits within the entire ecosystem and the model that's behind the scenes for that community." The new Digg will launch in the coming weeks as a website and mobile app.

Digg is coming back, thanks to its founder -- and Reddit's

David Pierce is editor-at-large and Vergecast co-host with over a decade of experience covering consumer tech. Previously, at Protocol, The Wall Street Journal, and Wired. Sometime last fall, Kevin Rose started thinking seriously about Digg again. A smidge over two decades ago, he'd launched a social and link sharing website that, for years, was known as "the homepage of the internet." Since then, Digg had been through several owners and many pivots, Rose had gone on to several other careers, and the internet had moved on. Rose had thought about building something like Digg again, and had even been approached to buy back the domain and website a few times, but the timing had never been right. This time, though, things started to click. Rose and a group of what he calls "brainstorming partners," which included Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian, design and product exec Justin Mezzell, and even folks like Blogger and Twitter cofounder Ev Williams, started to talk about whether AI might be able to help them build a better social platform. "I would call Alexis up and we would chat," Rose says, "and we'd be like, 'hey, what if, what if, what if?' And a lot of those things started giving us both that butterflies-in-the-stomach situation, where you're like, 'oh, this could be cool. This could be really cool.'" Now, Digg is making a comeback. Rose will be its chair, Mezzell its CEO, and Ohanian an adviser. (Both Rose and Ohanian are also venture capitalists now, and their firms are investing in the new venture.) They bought the domain and other assets from Money Group for a price they wouldn't disclose and are bringing it back. The site is relaunching today, but only in a limited form. Its ultimate ambitions, however, are enormous: Digg aims to build the kind of community-first social platform that basically no longer exists on the internet. And its new founding team thinks AI could be the secret to pulling it off. If you've been on the internet long enough to remember the old Digg, you already have a rough idea of how the new Digg will work. Everything is based on content and links: someone shares a link, and people can comment and vote on the links. (If you like something, you "Digg" it; the old "Bury" downvote option is now gone.) The most popular stuff ends up on the homepage -- which Rose and Mezzell tell me they hope will once again be the homepage of the internet -- but there will also be countless smaller communities surfacing and sharing stuff in their own niche. There are, of course, plenty of ways to talk about links on the internet. One of them, Reddit, continues to be very popular! The team isn't shy about the comparison but thinks that by better engaging with the community, and without the growth-at-all-costs requirements of being a public company, they can build something that takes better care of its users. If Digg does this right, the homepage will feel like Old Digg, and everything else might feel like Better Reddit. Rose says he and Ohanian are both convinced -- and both learned the hard way -- that the real trick, the thing nobody has yet done properly, is to give the communities the tools they actually need to operate. This is where AI comes in. So much of a moderator's job, Rose says, is just grunt work: fighting spam, reviewing obvious policy violations, litigating pointless fights. "How can we remove the janitorial work of moderators and community managers," he says, "and convert what they do every day into more of a kind of 'director of vibes, culture and community' than someone that is just sitting there doing the laborious crappy stuff that comes in through the front door?" The new Digg, Rose says, will include lots of AI-forward ways to sort through and make decisions on content. He also hopes AI can be used for fun. "I'm just making stuff up here, but there's everything from an AI agent that converts your entire sub-community into Klingon, to another one where you don't allow a certain type of profanity and that's automatically auto-moderated." Users will be able to tap AI models to build stuff right in their communities, too. "If we can create more of a dynamic canvas where agents are layered on top to assist, to help, to do wild things, to create games, to do whatever that community wants them to do, then we have something," Rose says. The new Digg, if the team does it right, should feel more like a community-driven art project than an old-school internet forum. But Rose and Mezzell both say the whole thing depends on doing what users want -- and nothing else. "One of the things that I believe that made Digg, and makes Reddit, a special place on the internet," Rose says, "is that there are humans behind the scenes with real opinions, real conversation, real stories that they find interesting. The second you start to sterilize that, you're just an aggregator of information. You're a fancy RSS reader with some voting on it." One big challenge, Mezzell says, is figuring out how to reward and promote users for doing good work. Digg won't show how many followers you have because that creates bad incentives; same with competing to be the most-"Dugg" person on the platform. "There are all these very simple systems that we already have, for commenting systems and branching and all that stuff. But even if we start there, we cannot stop asking the question about how to give people the respect for being really insightful, for being really encouraging, for being really funny." He doesn't have a perfect answer for it yet, but he knows that's key to making it work. There's a lot more that the new Digg team doesn't have a perfect answer for yet. Rose and Mezzell both say, a few times each, that what's launching today is essentially a prototype. It'll have a homepage, a few sub-communities, some links, some comments, and that's about it. The goal is to get people excited that Digg is back, and then both introduce them to the new platform and build it alongside them. "If you come on day one," Rose says, it's 99.9 percent nostalgia and you're like, damn, this is like a slightly updated version of Digg that looks really cool." Give it some time -- maybe even just a few weeks, if the new team ships as fast as Mezzell promises -- and it'll be something different.

Social media app Digg, a former Reddit rival, is relaunching

Before Reddit there was Digg, which popularized up- and down-votes on online posts. Now the founders of both platforms -- social media veterans Kevin Rose and Alexis Ohanian -- are relaunching the early Reddit rival with a focus on "humanity and connection" they hope will be boosted by the use of artificial intelligence. Rose founded Digg, which launched in 2004 and let people up- and down-vote ("Digg" or "bury") content from users and from sources around the web. At its peak, it had 40 million monthly users -- a high number for the time considering that Facebook only hit 100 million in 2008. Digg was divvied up and sold in 2012, with many of its assets and patents acquired by LinkedIn. Reddit, which launched in 2005 and was cofounded by Ohanian, took a similar approach to let users vote on what they thought was the best and worst content on the site. But much has changed since 2012 -- not just when it comes to advances in artificial intelligence but also how people treat each other online. "The social space online is definitely harsher, it feels like, than it's ever been before," said Justin Mezzell, who will serve as the new company's CEO. "It feels really difficult to connect. I think the platforms have gotten more disconnected. You know, if ever there was a true town hall of the internet, it feels like it has been deconstructed in a pretty big way." Digg's new leaders say they want to use artificial intelligence to "handle the grunt work" of running a social media site while allowing humans to focus on building meaningful online communities. The question, Mezzell said, is how to get people to "show up and have conversations, to learn from each other, to share something they're passionate about and do it earnestly?" Especially when some of today's social media algorithms "exist really just optimize for outrage." Rose said Digg will take a more nuanced approach to content moderation than banning or not banning content, which is a process that can be easy to get around. "There is a world where, you know, you show up in (a) meditation (group) and you're swinging four-letter words all over the place, and you hit submit," he said. And "we come back and we say, hey, you can post this, of course, but only 2% of the audience is going to see it, because the way that the moderator set the tone." "That is unique. That is different. That's not like a hard-defining rule," Rose added "It's more like just sensing the voice and how it fits within the entire ecosystem and the model that's behind the scenes for that community." The new Digg will launch in the coming weeks as a website and mobile app.

Digg to make comeback as co-founder Rose, Reddit's Ohanian bet on AI-driven revival

March 5 (Reuters) - Digg founder Kevin Rose has teamed up with former rival Alexis Ohanian to buy the once-popular content aggregator as they bet on an artificial intelligence-powered revival of the platform that once drew around 40 million monthly visitors. Launched in 2004 by a then 27-year-old Rose, Digg was once called the "homepage of the internet" and was a rival to Reddit (RDDT.N), opens new tab, a firm co-founded by Ohanian. But the platform lost ground after its 2012 sale to New York-based tech incubator Betaworks. Microsoft's (MSFT.O), opens new tab LinkedIn scooped up its most valuable assets, including patents. It has since pivoted to curating news. Rose and Ohanian, who acquired Digg for an undisclosed sum, said on Wednesday they aim to revive the platform by leveraging their social media expertise, restoring its nostalgic early interface. Digg's early model allowed users to "digg" or "bury" content -- an early precursor to how social media platforms surface viral stories today. The duo also plans to use AI-driven curation to curb misinformation and toxic discourse. "Recently we've hit an inflection point where AI can become a helpful co-pilot to users and moderators, not replacing human conversation, but rather augmenting it," Rose said. He added that he had been approached several times over the past years to buy Digg but it "never felt right" before. Invites for the new version will roll out in the coming weeks, as Digg prepares to reenter a crowded social media landscape where smaller players such as Pinterest are jostling for ad dollars and user attention with giants such as Meta. Justin Mezzell, a longtime collaborator of Rose with experience at Google and Facebook, will take over as Digg CEO. The deal is backed by venture capital firms True Ventures, where Rose is a partner, and Ohanian's Seven Seven Six. Rose will be Digg's board chair and key advisor. Ohanian has also joined a bid led by former Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank McCourt to acquire TikTok's U.S. operations. Reporting by Jaspreet Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Leroy Leo Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab Suggested Topics:Artificial Intelligence

Can Digg's return fix what ails social media today? Reddit's cofounder is betting on it

In 2006, Digg, a social networking and bookmarking site, was one of the most popular websites. Today, many of you have probably never even heard of this Reddit-like site. Now, in a surprising turn of events, Digg is attempting a comeback, backed by an unlikely alliance between its founder, Kevin Rose, and former rival Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit. Why? Because, as you may have noticed, social networks have become increasingly unpleasant. Meta, like X (Twitter) before it, has rolled back its fact-checking program on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. As a result, all these networks have become more toxic. Digg's new team sees this. They declared, "The current social media landscape, community discourse has grown increasingly combative, cluttered, and exhausting. Users are bogged down by misinformation, spam, and the emotional toll of navigating hostile interactions." Also: This social media shift could be the opportunity you've been waiting for Ironically, it is just such failures that brought Digg down in the first place. Digg's disgrace began in 2010 when it was revealed that the so-called Digg Patriots were engaged in a widespread censorship campaign against left-leaning users. Using multiple accounts, up-vote padding, and ban campaigns, they muzzled liberal conversation on the site for months. In response, Rose removed the power of users to up-vote and down-vote stories. This failed. The Digg community hated this change. The users saw Digg was no longer a "site built by the community, for the community" and left. Digg never recovered, and Reddit largely took its place. Rose and Ohanian's answer today? "Digg plans to become an online destination with humanity and connection at its core," they've said in a press release. Their vision for the new Digg is to restore the spirit of discovery and genuine community that characterized the early days of the internet. That's easier said than done. The pair explained that they plan on doing this by incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance user experience and moderation. Rose explained, "We've hit an inflection point where AI can become a helpful co-pilot to users and moderators, not replacing human conversation, but rather augmenting it, allowing users to dig deeper, while at the same time removing a lot of the repetitive burden for community moderators." Thus, AI will handle routine tasks such as spam filtering and toxic content removal, allowing human moderators to focus on fostering positive interactions within communities. Also: How to become a Meta Community Notes editor Ohanian added, "Online communities thrive when there's a balance between technology and human judgment. We're bringing Digg back to ensure that balance exists." Ohanian also recognizes the importance of moderators. These people play a major role in such networks as Reddit for setting the tone of groups and keeping them on track. However, they are largely ignored. For example, Reddit moderators aren't paid even as Reddit stock sells for over $160 a share. This is a problem. In a New York Times interview, he said, "What we never focused on is the back end," which are the moderation tools. "But it's the back end that really, really matters." Speaking as someone who, in a still earlier generation, helped moderate pre-internet social networks on CompuServe and AT&T Interchange and Usenet groups, truer words have seldom been spoken. A well-managed group can be a pleasure to its users, but one that isn't can become a sordid mess, such as 4Chan. Good tools that help moderators make managing groups much easier. To address this, one of the key innovations in Digg's moderation approach will be a more nuanced system for content visibility. Instead of simply banning or allowing content, the platform will adjust visibility based on community standards. For example, posts that don't align with a group's tone may have reduced visibility, encouraging adherence to community norms. Also: How new Facebook policies incentivize spreading misinformation Justin Mezzell, a long-time Rose collaborator, has been appointed CEO of the new Digg. The leadership team's goal is to create an environment where users can engage earnestly, learn from each other, and share their passions without the toxicity that plagues many current social media platforms. The revival of Digg comes at a time when the social media landscape is in flux. With Twitter's transformation under Elon Musk, Meta's shift toward video content, and Reddit's recent public offering, Rose and Ohanian see an opportunity to offer a fresh alternative. Is Digg's relaunch just a nostalgic nod to a bygone era of social media, or can Digg be revived? We'll see. Rose has ambitious plans for the platform's future. He believes Digg's agility will allow it to quickly adapt and innovate more than its larger competitors. Rose said, "Our goal isn't just to honor Digg's legacy as a trusted news source and discussion hub, but to evolve it." Ohanian concluded, "Kevin and I are here to build something better than what social platforms are offering today. AI should handle the grunt work in the background while humans focus on what they do best: building real connections." As invitations for the new Digg begin rolling out in the coming weeks, we'll see if this blast from the past can successfully reimagine itself. With its focus on AI-assisted moderation, community-driven content, and a return to the spirit of discovery, Digg's revival could reshape the social media landscape.

Social News Site Digg Returning From Moonbirds, Reddit Founders -- With an AI Twist - Decrypt

Rose and Alexis Ohanian -- a co-owner of the venture and co-founder of one-time Digg competitor Reddit -- acquired the brand, and plan to put "humanity and connection" at the center while utilizing a strong dose of AI to help strike an ideal balance of community and content moderation. Alongside Rose and Ohanian, Justin Mezzell -- the former COO of Rose's Moonbirds company Proof, and the artist behind that prominent collection -- will join the new Digg as CEO. "At various times over the years I had been approached to repurchase Digg; it never felt right," said Rose in a statement. "Just recently we've hit an inflection point where AI can become a helpful co-pilot to users and moderators, not replacing human conversation, but rather augmenting it." The rebooted platform will take a mobile-focused approach and aims to prioritize transparency while offering unspecified "rewards" for human effort. "Kevin and I are here to build something better than what social platforms are offering today," said Ohanian. "AI should handle the grunt work in the background while humans focus on what they do best: building real connections." "I'm all in on this chapter," he added. The Reddit co-founder is hoping to make another social platform better as well, having just joined Project Liberty's bid to acquire TikTok for the U.S. market. Ohanian said that he wants to bring the video-based social platform on-chain. Representatives for Digg did not immediately respond to Decrypt's request for comment on whether or not Digg may have blockchain or crypto connections, given the mention of rewarding human participation. Rose's return to Digg comes after an unceremonious end to his last high-profile venture with Proof and Moonbirds. After raising more than $60 million in funding -- including $10 million from Ohanian's Seven Seven Six -- the team faced immense criticism after the massive Moonbirds launch, with the value of the NFTs falling alongside the rest of the market. Proof was ultimately sold to Yuga Labs in early 2024. Moonbirds NFTs now start at a price of about $1,000 worth of ETH on the secondary market, after initially selling for about $7,600 each during the initial sale in April 2022. Digg was acquired by Rose and Ohanian for an undisclosed sum, and is backed by their respective VC firms, True Ventures and Seven Seven Six. The site currently allows users to sign up for early access by adding their email address.

Digg is getting another revival, this time with an injection of AI

Founder Kevin Rose and Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Digg's old rival Reddit, have bought the former Web 2.0 darling. Digg is getting another reboot with two of the most prominent names of the Web 2.0 era leading the charge. Founder Kevin Rose has bought it back for an undisclosed sum. Rose's partner in this endeavor is a very interesting one. Alexis Ohanian, a co-founder of -- which was at one point the site's biggest rival -- acquired Digg alongside Rose. They surely have hopes that Digg can go toe-to-toe with Ohanian's former company once again. According to , Rose and Ohanian "have teamed up to revive the social platform with a fresh vision to restore the spirit of discovery and genuine community that made the early web a fun and exciting place to be." The former rivals plan to tap into their knowledge of what did and didn't work at Digg and Reddit over the years to help make the relaunch a success. Rose and Ohanian, both now venture capitalists, have also been meeting with community leaders from online forums (including Reddit) to try and better understand what gets in their way or frustrates them in order to address those factors in the new Digg. The new Digg will have a mobile-first approach too. Since this is 2025, of course there's an AI element here. The plan is to make Digg distinct from other services by "focusing on AI innovations designed to enhance the user experience and build a human-centered alternative." Rose suggested to The New York Times that AI could help with moderation and allow for fun quirks, like translating a discussion among sci-fi enthusiasts into Klingon. "At various times over the years I had been approached to repurchase Digg; it never felt right. The technologies to solve our biggest pain points didn't exist," Rose said. "Just recently we've hit an inflection point where AI can become a helpful co-pilot to users and moderators, not replacing human conversation, but rather augmenting it, allowing users to dig deeper, while at the same time removing a lot of the repetitive burden for community moderators". Justin Mezzell, an experienced product design exec and a longtime collaborator of Rose's, is CEO of Digg. Rose is the company's board chair and key advisor. Ohanian also sits on Digg's board and will be an advisor. Digg has had a long and winding road to get to this point. It was an early darling of the social media era as it went toe-to-toe with Reddit to curate the best of the internet through submissions from users, who would upvote (or Digg) the things they liked to push it further up the homepage -- similar to how Reddit works. However, Digg's early success gave way to attempts to game the system, while a contentious 2010 redesign caused a mass exodus of users to Reddit. The company was sold off in parts in 2012, with LinkedIn and The Washington Post Company buying some aspects. A startup studio and venture capital company called Betaworks and as a site where editors curated the content. That approach continued on until now, even after Digg was sold to an advertising company in 2018. The most recent version of Digg was still pretty solid, as it continued to offer a nice blend of curated material from around the web as well as some original writing from its editors. There were some hints that Rose was getting back in the Digg mix. After several years away, Rose and co-host Alex Albrecht resumed their Diggnation podcast last year. In December, a post on the Digg X account showed a screenshot of the app's icon with a bubble indicating that there were 3825 notifications. The same number is in the X account's header image. Some have taken that as a hint that the relaunch will take place on March 8 (3/8/25). In any case, Rose suggested the plan is to start small and ramp up Digg's features in the coming months. Here's hoping that, as part of this revival, the company reanimates , a much-missed RSS reader from the Betaworks era. And while we're bringing new life to staples of the Web 2.0 era, for the love of all that is well and good in this world, can someone please bring back too?

ALEXIS OHANIAN & KEVIN ROSE BUY BACK SOCIAL PLATFORM DIGG

Enter your email to get Benzinga's ultimate morning update: The PreMarket Activity Newsletter Two OG Internet Founders & Former Rivals Team Up with Goal of Using AI to Bring Humanity Back to Social Media Download hi-res images and press assets HERE LOS ANGELES, March 5, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Social media pioneers Kevin Rose and Alexis Ohanian have acquired Digg. Once industry competitors, with Rose the Founder of Digg and Ohanian the Founder of Reddit, the duo have teamed up to revive the social platform with a fresh vision to restore the spirit of discovery and genuine community that made the early web a fun and exciting place to be. In the current social media landscape, community discourse has grown increasingly combative, cluttered, and exhausting. Users are bogged down by misinformation, spam, and the emotional toll of navigating hostile interactions. The upcoming relaunch of Digg is offering a solution. By combining Ohanian's and Rose's historical knowledge and deep understanding of what has and hasn't worked from their experiences at Reddit and Digg with today's technological advancements - particularly in AI - Digg plans to become an online destination with humanity and connection at its core. Invites for the new version of Digg will be rolling out in the coming weeks. Digg launched in 2004 with its innovative crowdsourced voting system. Users could "digg" (upvote) or "bury" (downvote) content, shaping what trended online. At its peak, Digg was widely regarded as the "homepage of the internet," attracting 40 million monthly unique visitors. In 2012, Rose sold Digg to Betaworks, while its most valuable assets, including its patents, were acquired by LinkedIn, now one of today's dominant social platforms. "At various times over the years I had been approached to repurchase Digg; it never felt right. The technologies to solve our biggest pain points didn't exist," said Kevin Rose, Digg's original founder and founding CEO, who will serve as the new Digg's Board Chair, investor, and key advisor. "Just recently we've hit an inflection point where AI can become a helpful co-pilot to users and moderators, not replacing human conversation, but rather augmenting it, allowing users to dig deeper, while at the same time removing a lot of the repetitive burden for community moderators". Rose continued, "With Alexis on board, we bring a shared history, a deep respect for online communities, and a new perspective on what the internet needs today. Our goal isn't just to honor Digg's legacy as a trusted news source and discussion hub, but to evolve it. We believe users and moderators should have more control, transparency, and ownership over the communities they work so hard to build." "Online communities thrive when there's a balance between technology and human judgment. We're bringing Digg back to ensure that balance exists," said Alexis Ohanian, Founder & General Partner at Seven Seven Six and Co-Founder of Reddit. "Kevin and I are here to build something better than what social platforms are offering today. AI should handle the grunt work in the background while humans focus on what they do best: building real connections. No one dreams of spending their day hunting down spam or playing content police - they want to create, connect, and build thriving communities. I'm all in on this chapter." Backed by True Ventures (Fitbit, Peloton, Ring, BlueSky, Blue Bottle Coffee), where Rose is a partner, and Seven Seven Six (Stoke Space, Mr. Beast Industries, Angel City FC, and Riverside), founded by Ohanian, Digg is primed to set itself apart from other platforms by focusing on AI innovations designed to enhance the user experience and build a human-centered alternative, one that prioritizes transparency, rewards human effort, and fosters enriching discussions. Along with key members of the small team empowered to execute the new vision for Digg, Rose and Ohanian have been meeting with experienced community managers from various online forums to understand pain points and build innovative solutions. The company's ongoing commitment will be to use the best of AI to create a consistently meaningful user-driven experience. Using a mobile-first approach, Digg will aim to provide value to community managers and creators for engaging with their communities on the platform. Justin Mezzell, a longtime collaborator of Rose's and a seasoned product design leader, will take the helm as CEO. With more than 15 years of experience in product design across SaaS, mobile, media, and agency sectors, Mezzell has worked with major technology brands including Google, Facebook, Twitter, and PayPal. The company's Board of Directors will include Mezzell, Rose, Ohanian and True Ventures Partner Tony Conrad. In August 2024, Rose teamed up with former diggnation co-host Alex Albrecht to relaunch the show to a welcoming and nostalgic audience, playing a key factor in acknowledging that now is the right time for a Digg reboot. Rose and Albrecht have released several episodes over the past six months and will continue to do so regularly. To celebrate the news and discuss this next chapter of Digg, Rose and Albrecht will host a live episode of diggnation in Austin, TX on March 8, 2025 with special guest Tim Ferriss and more. Learn more here. ABOUT DIGG Digg is a pioneering digital media platform that curates and highlights the most interesting stories on the internet, making it easier for users to discover, discuss, and share trending news. The platform remains widely recognized in the online community, even today, drawing over 600,000 monthly viewers who engage with our streamlined and user-friendly interface to explore curated, high-quality content. Media Contacts: Chelsey Northern / The Untold [email protected] Alana Battaglia / The Untold [email protected] View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/alexis-ohanian--kevin-rose-buy-back-social-platform-digg-302392419.html SOURCE Digg Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs

Can Kevin Rose and Alexis Ohanian bring Digg back?

In this week's episode of StrictlyVC Download, TechCrunch Editor in Chief Connie Loizos is joined by Kevin Rose, who founded Digg. The news aggregator changed the way people engaged with the news back in 2004 and it's apparently coming back. Kevin joined forces with Alexis Ohanian -- his former rival and the co-founder of Reddit -- and Digg's new CEO Justin Mezzell to relaunch Digg for a completely new and expanded audience. In this conversation, Rose shares the story behind repurchasing Digg, why now is the perfect moment for a comeback, and how AI will play a key role in moderating and enhancing online discourse.

Social Media Founder Kevin Rose, Alexis Ohanian To Acquire & Reboot Digg: Old Rivals, New Vision - Reddit (NYSE:RDDT)

Two experienced social media entrepreneurs are uniting in an effort to bring back Digg, the former "homepage of the internet." What Happened: Digg founder Kevin Rose and Reddit RDDT co-founder Alexis Ohanian have teamed up to acquire and reboot Digg, a move that comes while Ohanian is also part of a group bidding to acquire social media platform TikTok. "Two OG internet founders & former rivals team up with goal of using AI to bring humanity back to social media," a press release announcing the reboot of Digg reads. The duo have a plan to restore the old spirt of discovery and community of Digg and Reddit along with new growth plans to bring the platform into the new era, according to the release. Digg will use AI and other tools to fight off misinformation, spam and hostile interactions, all items that keep users off of social media. "Digg plans to become an online destination with humanity and connection at its core." Users can sign up for early access for when invites go public. A counter shows 189,000 signups as of Wednesday afternoon. "The front page of the internet, now with superpowers," the website reads. "At various times over the years I had been approached to repurchase Digg; it never felt right. The technologies to solve our biggest pain points didn't exist," Rose said. Rose will serve as Digg's board chair, an investor and key advisor. Rose said AI will help users and moderators without replacing human conversation. "With Alexis on board, we bring a shared history, a deep respect for online communities, and a new perspective on what the internet needs today." Ohanian said the goal of bringing Digg back is to build something different than existing social media platforms. "Online communities thrive when there's a balance between technology and human judgment. We're bringing Digg back to ensure that balance exists," Ohanian said. Ohanian said AI will "handle the grunt work" while humans focus on building real connections. "No one dreams of spending their day hunting down spam or playing content police - they want to create, connect, and build thriving communities. I'm all in on this chapter." Read Also: Reddit Co-Founder Alexis Ohanian Prints Mean Tweets And Screenshots: How He Uses Them As Motivation Why It's Important: Digg launched in 2004 with a crowdsourced voting system that highlighted the top trending content. Once called the "homepage of the internet," Digg had 40 million monthly unique visitors at its peak. Rose later sold Digg to Betaworks, with some of the company's assets, including patents, acquired by LinkedIn. Digg is backed by True Ventures, where Rose is a partner and Seven Seven Six, founded by Ohanian. Justin Mezzell, a longtime collaborator with Rose, will be Digg's new CEO. Mezzell previously worked at companies including Google, Facebook, Twitter and PayPal. Digg's board of directors will include Mezzell, Rose, Ohanian, and Tony Conrad, a partner at True Ventures. Once rivals due to the competition of Digg and Reddit, the storyline of Rose and Ohanian joining forces could make the reboot of Digg a top social media story to watch. The two entrepreneurs have been connected through several ventures in recent years with Ohanian investing in Moonbirds, an NFT project launched by Rose previously, before it was sold to Yuga Labs. A successful reboot of Digg could be bad news for Reddit, as it would likely be the closest competitor based on the concept and with Ohanian on board could follow a similar structure. Read Next: Reddit Co-Founder Alexis Ohanian Explains Investments In NFTs, Says This Is The Difference Web3 Provides Image via Shutterstock RDDTReddit Inc$166.674.71%OverviewMarket News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs

News Aggregator Site Digg Is Returning, With an AI Twist

Digg, the web portal that helped popularize upvoting and downvoting, is bringing in Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian as an adviser. 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." 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.

Digg to relaunch with focus on 'humanity and connection'

Before Reddit there was Digg, which popularized up- and down-votes on online posts. Now the founders of both platforms -- social media veterans Kevin Rose and Alexis Ohanian -- are relaunching the early Reddit rival with a focus on "humanity and connection" they hope will be boosted by the use of artificial intelligence. Rose founded Digg, which launched in 2004 and let people up- and down-vote ("Digg" or "bury") content from users and from sources around the web. At its peak, it had 40 million monthly users -- a high number for the time considering that Facebook only hit 100 million in 2008. Digg was divvied up and sold in 2012, with many of its assets and patents acquired by LinkedIn. Reddit, which launched in 2005 and was co-founded by Ohanian, took a similar approach to let users vote on what they thought was the best and worst content on the site. But much has changed since 2012 -- not just when it comes to advances in artificial intelligence but also how people treat each other online. "The social space online is definitely harsher, it feels like, than it's ever been before," said Justin Mezzell, who will serve as the new company's CEO. "It feels really difficult to connect. I think the platforms have gotten more disconnected. You know, if ever there was a true town hall of the internet, it feels like it has been deconstructed in a pretty big way." Digg's new leaders say they want to use artificial intelligence to "handle the grunt work" of running a social media site while allowing humans to focus on building meaningful online communities. The question, Mezzell said, is how to get people to "show up and have conversations, to learn from each other, to share something they're passionate about and do it earnestly?" Especially when some of today's social media algorithms "exist really just optimize for outrage." Rose said Digg will take a more nuanced approach to content moderation than banning or not banning content, which is a process that can be easy to get around. "There is a world where, you know, you show up in (a) meditation (group) and you're swinging four-letter words all over the place, and you hit submit," he said. And "we come back and we say, hey, you can post this, of course, but only 2% of the audience is going to see it, because the way that the moderator set the tone." "That is unique. That is different. That's not like a hard-defining rule," Rose added "It's more like just sensing the voice and how it fits within the entire ecosystem and the model that's behind the scenes for that community." The new Digg will launch in the coming weeks as a website and mobile app. © 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

Digg Is Coming Back (Sort Of)

2006 headlines feel like they're from another planet. Credit: Web Design Museum Digg, the dominant link aggregator of the mid-2000s, is attempting yet another comeback. Kevin Rose, one of Digg's original founders, has acquired the brand name for an undisclosed sum and is teaming up with Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian to build a new-ish social network. The plan was announced this morning in articles on Techcrunch and in the New York Times. There aren't many concrete details in these articles about what the site will look like, though they do note it will use AI as a key moderation tool. "Online communities thrive when there's a balance between technology and human judgment," Ohanian told Techcrunch, adding that, "AI should handle the grunt work in the background while humans focus on what they do best: building real connections." Rose surveyed current Reddit moderators in an attempt to learn what improved moderation tools could look like. That's about it in terms of specifics -- both pieces focus less on the tech and more on the founders themselves. But we do know the new Digg won't look like an "old school forum" according to Rose. He said that, in a few years, it "will be an interface that is unlike any other that you've seen." Whatever that means. Digg was founded in 2004 -- more than two decades ago, an eternity in internet terms -- by Rose and other collaborators. Reddit arrived on the scene around a year later, in 2005, founded by current CEO Steve Huffman, the late hacktivist Aaron Swartz, and Ohanian. The two websites fought to be the dominate link aggregator for a half-decade, a competition Reddit eventually won. One way of looking at this history is that Reddit ultimately won over users, though you could also argue that Digg destroyed itself: An extremely buggy and widely unpopular 2010 redesign, launched under Rose's leadership, prioritized the posts of certain contributors and ultimately led to a mass exodus of users. The site never recovered and was soon more or less sold off piecemeal in 2012. How to sign up for early access to the new Digg Invitations to the new version of the site will be sent in the next few weeks -- you can sign up here to try it if you're curious. With any luck it won't just be yet another place to yell about screenshots taken from other social networks; the internet sure could use something that's actually new. Only time will tell, though.

'We Can Do It Better': A Reddit Rival Just Relaunched -- With Alexis Ohanian on Its Board

Rose and Ohanian stated on Wednesday that they would be relaunching Digg, with invites to the platform rolling out in the coming weeks. Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, 41, has joined forces with former rival Kevin Rose, 48, to revive Digg, a social and link-sharing website Rose founded in 2004 -- it was divided up and sold for parts to Betaworks, LinkedIn, and The Washington Post in 2012. The two intend to infuse the new Digg with AI content moderators, a move not yet implemented by Reddit. The Digg of 2004 allowed users to share links that others could "digg" and upvote or "bury" and downvote, creating a place for trending news. Users could comment on links too, with the most popular content ending up on the homepage. In its heyday, Digg attracted 40 million monthly unique users, but after a 2010 update removed the "bury" button, users revolted and left the site in droves, leading to its demise. Ohanian and Rose announced on Wednesday that they are relaunching Digg as a mobile-first platform, with invites to the new Digg rolling out to users in the coming weeks. The webpage for Digg's reboot shows that over 175,000 people have signed up to get early access to it at the time of writing. Related: You'll Never Achieve Work-Life Balance -- and You Shouldn't, Reddit Co-Founder Alexis Ohanian Says According to Bloomberg, Justin Mezzell, a product designer who previously worked at Code School and RevenueCat, will be Digg's new CEO. Ohanian and Rose will serve on the board of directors. The team bought Digg's domain and assets from Money Group for an undisclosed sum, and have received investments from Ohanian-founded venture capital (VC) firm Seven Seven Six, as well as True Ventures, a VC firm where Rose is a partner. They declined to disclose how much they had raised, per Bloomberg. Plans to revive Digg started when Rose reached out to Ohanian last year with the idea of a new Digg that could use AI to help fight spam and moderate content. According to The New York Times, Rose determined where AI could help Digg by spending thousands of dollars on targeted ads on Reddit, a comparable platform, to ask moderators about their biggest challenges. "These moderators are pouring their lives into this," he told The Times. "We think we can do it better." Rose told The Verge that he envisions Digg using AI for "everything from an AI agent that converts your entire sub-community into Klingon," a fictional language in the Star Trek universe, "to another one where you don't allow a certain type of profanity and that's automatically auto-moderated." Related: Here's Why Reddit Turned Down an Acquisition Offer From Google in Its Early Days, According to Cofounder Alexis Ohanian Ohanian, who served on Reddit's board until 2020, stated in a press release that AI will take on the background "grunt work" of fighting spam and filtering through content on Digg while human moderators focus on "building real connections." Reddit has a built-in moderation system called AutoModerator that automatically goes through posts to check to see if they violate community policies. Though the platform introduced an AI-powered safety feature in March 2024 to detect online harassment, it does not yet have AI agents working as moderators and has not stated if it is working on implementing them, per Business Insider.

Digg is Back, Apparently

The Internet is Not Forever, So It's Time to Preserve What You Can Digg was a huge deal back when it was popular in the late 2000s. These days, however, social media looks a lot different. Because of that, you might find the reintroduction of Digg to be a lot different than how you remembered it from back in the day. Digg, the once-dominant social news aggregator that defined the early web, is back. Kevin Rose, Digg's original founder, has reacquired the platform and is relaunching it with a renewed focus on community and, as it couldn't be different for any tech launch in 2025, AI. Apparently, this relaunch wants to recapture the spirit of the original Digg, which was dubbed by some as the "homepage of the internet," while also staying fresh and modern. Rather than employing AI for content prioritization or advertising, the new and fresh Digg is giving moderators and community members AI-powered tools they can use to moderate and curate content. The ultimate goal is to eliminate the "janitorial work" associated with managing online communities -- combating spam, enforcing basic rules, and handling repetitive tasks. The new platform sees its AI assisting moderators, transforming their roles from enforcers to "directors of vibes, culture, and community." We might also have AI agents that can perform a variety of tasks within communities, from translating content into different languages to enforcing specific community rules (like profanity filters) or even creating interactive games. The platform itself might feel a lot more Reddit-like in nature, but Digg wants to address some of Reddit's own shortcomings as well by doing things such as giving communities tools to self-govern efficiently. Metrics like follower counts, which can encourage competition and negativity, will also apparently be de-emphasized or outright eliminated. Instead, Digg aims to find new ways to reward users for positive contributions -- insightful comments, encouragement, and humor. Of course, we won't know how that looks like exactly until the app launches. Right now, you can only apply for an invite for the relaunched app. A prototype of the relaunched app is supposed to launch today with a homepage and a limited amount of sub-communities, but again, you'll have to ask for an invite, and get accepted for one, if you want to use it. Since 2012, Digg has just worked as what's basically a basic news aggregator. It has no social element at all. Before its 2012 redesign, Digg was a social news aggregator where you submitted links to articles, videos, and other web content. The community then voted on these submissions, either "Digging" (upvoting) or "Burying" (downvoting) them. And the more Diggs a story received, the more prominently it was featured, potentially reaching the front page. Users could also comment on subscriptions and share them. It was basically a curated feed of news and submissions where user opinion was the main catalyst on whether a submission made it or not. If it sounds a lot like Reddit, it's because it was -- in fact, Digg's success was the catalyst for the launch of Reddit back in 2005. Now, it's coming back as a Reddit competitor of sorts. If you want to see what it's about, you can go to Digg's reboot website and sign up with your email to receive more information once the platform launches. We're being promised a relatively fast release from here, so who knows? We might have a fully working and open Digg redesign before the year ends. Source: The Verge

Digg founder teams up with former Reddit rival to buy and revive website

Content aggregator Digg is making a comeback with the help of an unlikely partner: Reddit co-founder and rival Alexis Ohanian. Ohanian and Digg founder Kevin Rose acquired the platform for an undisclosed sum. The deal is backed by venture capital firms True Ventures, where Rose is a partner, and Ohanian's Seven Seven Six. The partnership was announced Wednesday in a video post to the company's X account in which Rose called the partnership a "team-up he would have never imagined 20 years ago." Digg was founded in 2004 and rose to prominence as a major outlet for trending news because it allowed users to rate stories. Rose made what became an infamously goofy appearance on the cover of Businessweek in 2006 as the kid who "made $60 million in 18 months." The company said in a release that it aims to differentiate itself in the social media market by "focusing on AI innovations designed to enhance the user experience and build a human-centered alternative." Digg said it will also create a platform that "prioritizes transparency, rewards human effort, and fosters enriching discussions." Ohanian also teased the collaboration, telling X followers on Wednesday that he was "working on something new... but also old... but also very new" and is "excited" to be partnering with Rose. At its peak in 2008, Digg was reportedly valued at about $160 million. But the rise of Facebook and other social sites caused traffic to Digg to plummet. Meanwhile, Reddit, which was founded a year after Digg by Ohanian and current CEO Steve Huffman, emerged as a direct rival to Digg by forming communities around types of content and letting users similarly rate news stories. In 2012, Digg's brand and website were acquired by tech incubator Betaworks for about $500,000. Reddit has continued its ascent, reporting nearly 102 million daily active users at the end of the fourth quarter. The site gained widespread attention when it became the center of the 2020 meme stock craze as retail traders inflicted huge pain on hedge funds shorting stocks using a subreddit known as Wallstreetbets. Reddit went public on the New York Stock Exchange last March at $34 a share and has seen its stock nearly quintuple. Shares are up about 1% year to date and added 4% during Wednesday's session. Ohanian has moved on to other projects since he stepped down from Reddit's board in 2020. He's currently partnering with billionaire Frank McCourt in a bid for TikTok after President Donald Trump extended the initial deadline for the company's Chinese-parent ByteDance to sell the social media platform or face a ban.

Digg returns to rescue us from the social media swamp - what are the odds?

In 2006, Digg, a social networking and bookmarking site, was one of the most popular websites. Today, many of you have probably never even heard of this Reddit-like site. Now, in a surprising turn of events, Digg is attempting a comeback, backed by an unlikely alliance between its founder, Kevin Rose, and former rival Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit. Why? Because, as you may have noticed, social networks have become increasingly unpleasant. Meta, like X (Twitter) before it, has rolled back its fact-checking program on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. As a result, all these networks have become more toxic. Digg's new team sees this. They declared, "The current social media landscape, community discourse has grown increasingly combative, cluttered, and exhausting. Users are bogged down by misinformation, spam, and the emotional toll of navigating hostile interactions." Also: This social media shift could be the opportunity you've been waiting for Ironically, it is just such failures that brought Digg down in the first place. Digg's disgrace began in 2010 when it was revealed that the so-called Digg Patriots were engaged in a widespread censorship campaign against liberals. Using multiple accounts, up-vote padding, and ban campaigns, they muzzled liberal conversation on the site for months. In response, Rose removed the power of users to up-vote and down-vote stories. This failed. The Digg community hated this change. The users saw Digg was no longer a "site built by the community, for the community" and left. Digg never recovered, and Reddit largely took its place. Rose and Ohanian's answer today? "Digg plans to become an online destination with humanity and connection at its core," they've said in a press release. Their vision for the new Digg is to restore the spirit of discovery and genuine community that characterized the early days of the Internet. That's easier said than done. The pair explained that they plan on doing this by incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance user experience and moderation. Rose explained, "We've hit an inflection point where AI can become a helpful co-pilot to users and moderators, not replacing human conversation, but rather augmenting it, allowing users to dig deeper, while at the same time removing a lot of the repetitive burden for community moderators." Thus, AI will handle routine tasks such as spam filtering and toxic content removal, allowing human moderators to focus on fostering positive interactions within communities. Also: How to become a Meta Community Notes editor Ohanian added, "Online communities thrive when there's a balance between technology and human judgment. We're bringing Digg back to ensure that balance exists." Ohanian also recognizes the importance of moderators. These people play a major role in such networks as Reddit for setting the tone of groups and keeping them on track. However, they are largely ignored. For example, Reddit moderators aren't paid even as Reddit stock sells for over $160 a share. This is a problem. In a New York Times interview, he said, "What we never focused on is the back end," which are the moderation tools. "But it's the back end that really, really matters." Speaking as someone who, in a still earlier generation, helped moderate pre-Internet social networks on CompuServe and AT&T Interchange and Usenet groups, truer words have seldom been spoken. A well-managed group can be a pleasure to its users, but one that isn't can become a sordid mess, such as 4Chan. Good tools that help moderators make managing groups much easier. To address this, one of the key innovations in Digg's moderation approach will be a more nuanced system for content visibility. Instead of simply banning or allowing content, the platform will adjust visibility based on community standards. For example, posts that don't align with a group's tone may have reduced visibility, encouraging adherence to community norms. Also: How new Facebook policies incentivize spreading misinformation Justin Mezzell, a long-time Rose collaborator, has been appointed CEO of the new Digg. The leadership team's goal is to create an environment where users can engage earnestly, learn from each other, and share their passions without the toxicity that plagues many current social media platforms. The revival of Digg comes at a time when the social media landscape is in flux. With Twitter's transformation under Elon Musk, Meta's shift toward video content, and Reddit's recent public offering, Rose and Ohanian see an opportunity to offer a fresh alternative. Is Digg's relaunch just a nostalgic nod to a bygone era of social media, or can Digg be revived? We'll see. Rose has ambitious plans for the platform's future. He believes Digg's agility will allow it to quickly adapt and innovate more than its larger competitors. Rose said, "Our goal isn't just to honor Digg's legacy as a trusted news source and discussion hub, but to evolve it." Ohanian concluded, "Kevin and I are here to build something better than what social platforms are offering today. AI should handle the grunt work in the background while humans focus on what they do best: building real connections." As invitations for the new Digg begin rolling out in the coming weeks, we'll see if this blast from the past can successfully reimagine itself. With its focus on AI-assisted moderation, community-driven content, and a return to the spirit of discovery, Digg's revival could reshape the social media landscape.