Gawker: Digg

Elite Yelp Cult Wreaks Havoc on Restaurants and Hors D'oeuvres

Adrian Chen — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 11:20:00 EDT

Yelp: Full of altruistic, food-loving people who get a kick out of highlighting restaurants they love, right? Wrong. The "Yelp Mafia" is a violent ravenous mob, bound by a shadowy covenant whose only condition is power—and free food. More »

4channers Are Vampires

Adrian Chen — Tue, 24 May 2011 13:05:10 EDT

A study by grad students at MIT produced this chart describing the average activity on 4chan over a two-week span. Those familiar with the site will not be surprised that it really livens up in the off-hours. More »

Tech's Winners and Losers of 2010

Ryan Tate — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 13:00:01 EST

Technology seemed especially relevant in 2010, what with The Social Network's blockbuster receipts and mass mania for Apple's iPad and iPhone 4. The newfound attention helped turned some techies into genuine stars — while lending others real worldwide infamy. More »

Digg's Big Layoffs

Ryan Tate — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 19:16:25 EDT

Digg will cut 25 of 67 staff, said the social news site's new CEO. Users and executives have been defecting, but Digg will still have 10 times as many staff as rival Reddit. Now it just needs Reddit's outsized momentum. More »

Digg CEO 'Deeply' Sorry for Thing He Didn't Do

Ryan Tate — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 20:58:34 EDT

In his debut blog post as CEO, Digg's Matt Williams writes he's "deeply sorry" about the social news site's "disappointing redesign." Sad: Williams inherited the redesign entirely from Digg co-founder Kevin Rose. Hopefully Williams' contract includes a groveling bonus. [Pic] More »

How To Make a Killing While Your Startup Burns

Ryan Tate — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 17:05:01 EDT

Give Kevin Rose credit: The Digg CEO keeps a cool head. "Gotta take risk" was the tech playboy's cheerful response to Digg's mounting problems today. His secret to staying relaxed: Extracurricular investments with buddies hedge Rose well against Digg's death. More »

A Turning Point for Digg

Ryan Tate — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 19:22:56 EDT

Enjoy the fine mess, Matt Williams. Digg's newly announced CEO has the privilege of cleaning up after a redesign that has users up in arms, the social news site scrambling to add back old features, and rival Reddit surging. More »

How Digg Got Spanked By Its Own Users

Ryan Tate — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 14:54:31 EDT

Unhappy with a deal that Digg.com's management cut with major media companies, the social news site's users turned Digg's front page into a de facto advertisement for rival aggregator Reddit today, upvoting scores of Reddit links. More »

The Wedding Proposal Geek-Off

Ryan Tate — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 19:36:26 EDT

There's seems to be a nerdy arms race under way over who can propose to their fiancée the most ridiculously networked fashion. Digg's Matt Van Horn, who just live-streamed video of his proposal, is the winner. For now. More »

Is Digg Being Hijacked by a Right-Wing Fringe Group?

Max Read — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 23:46:01 EDT

Would it be diffcult to game news aggregation giant Digg's simple up-vote/down-vote system for selecting links for its heavily-trafficked front page? Not really: The right-wing group "Digg Patriots" appears to have engaged in a multiyear effort to "bury" left-leaning sites. More »

Was Digg's CEO Ousted Over Inflated Traffic?

Ryan Tate — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 16:01:07 EDT

Kevin Rose could hardly have sent a clearer signal: Less than 12 hours after announcing his takeover as CEO, the Digg co-founder killed the social news site's controversial "DiggBar." It would seem Rose finally had it with Digg inflating traffic. More »

How Will Digg Founder Kevin Rose Juggle His Tough New Job and Food Blogger Girlfriend?

Adrian Chen — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 03:09:57 EDT

Kevin Rose has a new high-pressure job now that he's taken over as Digg's CEO. Staunching Digg's user bleed to Twitter a big challenge. Even bigger: Doing this while maintaining his relationship with sugar-phobic food blogger Darya Pino. More »

CEO Ditches Digg: Is the Dream Over?

Ryan Tate — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 16:01:56 EDT

Can Digg ever become the powerhouse it so badly wanted to be? It's a natural question amid the departure of five-year CEO Jay Adelson, the latest in a line of painful goodbyes for the social news site. More »

From Poster Boy to Fright-Night Costume

Ryan Tate — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 18:24:41 EST

BusinessWeek made Kevin Rose a Web 2.0 poster-boy when its cover proclaimed he had "made $60 million," in completely imaginary money. Three years later, that bubble long gone, his picture makes the perfect ironic Halloween costume. More »

Apple's Conference Breaks Digg

Ryan Tate — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 13:39:31 EDT

The traffic, it was too much: Digg just went down, a likely victim of an overwhelming surge of traffic around the ongoing keynote speech at Apple's developer conference. What's weird about this news? More »

Digg's Fratty News Site Has a No-Homo Policy

Owen Thomas — Thu, 07 May 2009 13:09:11 EDT

If you wanted to imagine a topsy-turvy world where straight 19-year-old jock-nerds ran the media, just visit Digg. The site is so laden with antigay epithets that it automatically censors the word "homo" from headlines. More »

The Global Village Is Too Poor for YouTube

Owen Thomas — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 15:07:00 EDT

Just a few years ago, venture capitalists pushed Internet startups to conquer every last corner of the world. Now they're asking why they don't just pull the plug on the Third World. More »

Why Amazon.com Should Buy Digg

Owen Thomas — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 18:18:15 EDT

Digg needs to sell itself. Kevin Rose's headline-voting site is drowning; the more popular it gets, the more red ink it generates. But who needs a bunch of news stories rated? Here's an idea: Amazon.com. More »

SXSW, the Conference for Julia Allison and Other People Lacking Real Jobs

Scott Kidder — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 18:00:00 EDT

What recession? More than 10,000 revelers are expected for this year's SXSW Interactive conference in Austin, Texas this week. With no real work at hand, they're hitting the parties hard — especially the unofficial ones. More »

Digg Founder Kevin Rose Meets Platonic Ideal of Digg User

James Del — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 17:20:38 EDT

Kevin Rose, founder of the Web headline-voting service Digg, meets a fan Saturday after a live Diggnation taping at the South By Southwest conference in Austin, Texas. More »

The Web at 20: Not Quite Old Enough to Drink, Yet Drives Us to It

Owen Thomas — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 14:01:14 EDT

Dear important scientist Tim Berners-Lee: Thank you for inventing the World Wide Web 20 years ago. It's really great and stuff! But were you aware of the crimes committed in your name? More »

The Twitterati Are All Over the Place

Owen Thomas — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 19:23:49 EDT

Are all the Twitterers headed to the SXSW festival, like Digg's Kevin Rose? Actually, no! Here's where Boing Boing's Xeni Jardin, Salon.com edi-bore Joan Walsh, and Politico's Patrick Gavin recorded their time-wasting thoughts: More »

After Jimmy Fallon, Is Kevin Rose's Buddy Act Over?

Owen Thomas — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 04:02:57 EDT

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Did you hear? Digg founder Kevin Rose was on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon Wednesday. As was Rose's forgettable Diggnation cohost — what's his name? Ah, yes — Alex Albrecht, who we hear wants out. More »

Shira Lazar, Kevin Rose's Latest Fling

Owen Thomas — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 21:46:54 EST

Having famously "plowed through" San Francisco's eligible bachelorettes, Digg founder Kevin Rose went L.A. for his most recent paramour, Shira Lazar. Who is this Web-video wannabe with links to Dov Charney and Julia Allison? More »

Why Reality Will Bury Digg's Profit Dreams

Owen Thomas — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 11:46:59 EST

Digg, the raucous online news-rating site, has laid off 8 people from its 75-person workforce. CEO Jay Adelson writes that the company will "aggressively focus on reaching profitability within the year." There's no way. More »

Digg Founder Wants to Date Jennifer Aniston

Owen Thomas — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 16:48:00 EST

Kevin Rose, the boyish founder of Digg, a testosterone-soaked news-discussion site, has resolved to "date someone seriously" in 2009. Specifically, he plans to woo Marley & Me star Jennifer Aniston. More »

It Costs Digg $5 Million a Year to Run the Internet

Owen Thomas — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 14:20:00 EST

Perhaps Digg really is the future of the news business. The headline-discussion site, once an icon of the Web 2.0 movement, is losing millions of dollars a year. More »

Temptress of Silicon Valley shuts down useless site

Owen Thomas — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 17:00:00 EST

Earlier this year, Leah Culver appeared on the cover of a tech magazine blowing an enormous pink bubble. But the shrill-voiced San Francisco programmer no longer desires fame — even the modest sort afforded Silicon Valley's microcelebrities. The turnabout seems odd, considering how aggressively she once courted notoriety. More »

Kevin Rose's cold tweeting in your face

Paul Boutin — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 13:40:00 EST

Digg poster boy Kevin Rose is so hot that 726 people have already subscribed to a Twitter stream on which Rose pretends to be a head cold. For context, New York Times reporter Matt Richtel has 819 followers to the novel he's posting as tweets. Note to self: Become a celebrity first, then take up writing. More »

Jay Adelson pimps his ride

Owen Thomas — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 14:40:00 EST

Will the CEO of Digg make up his mind on who he wants to be? I once asked him what car he drove, and he took pains to let me know he had a suburban-dad Honda minivan and an environmentalist-standard-issue Toyota Prius. Just a regular guy! But he later complained when I suggested he wasn't a "rock star." I'm thinking Adelson — who commutes from his actual suburban-dad life in upstate New York to his CEO gig in san Francisco — is working on sexing up his image. A tipster says Adelson has just gotten a $109,000 all-electric, obsidian black Tesla Roadster. Which, if you think about it, is exactly the racy kind of vehicle most suburban dads his age might want to buy, if only they could afford it. More »

Digg's Kevin Rose interviews former Digg suitor Al Gore

Owen Thomas — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 13:00:00 EST

It only takes hearing so many jokes about Al Gore inventing Twitter to figure out that the former vice president has signed up for the microblogging service. Wisely, he's not really participating in the site, just using it to market his websites and announce his interview with Digg founder Kevin Rose, which airs tonight on Current, the Gore-backed cable channel. Current and Digg have been teaming up for a series of election-related events, including a party on election night. But Rose and Gore's acquaintance goes back almost two years. More »

Websites race to take credit for Obama victory

Owen Thomas — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 23:40:00 EST

Forget hacking voting machines; our media brethren are, at this moment, most concerned with gaming Digg to get out the vote for their stories about Barack Obama's apparent victory in the electoral college. (Our sister site Gawker was late to the game; its headline submission for "Obama Wins!" was seventh in line, judging by the URL.) Taking the lead: "Digg This If You Voted for Obama!" with more than 20,000 votes. It points to a CNN.com story. New media serves merely to confirm the victory of old media. More »

Current broadcasts worst election coverage ever

Owen Thomas — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 23:00:00 EST

Want to watch North Carolina gyrate to a hip-hop beat? Tune into Current, Al Gore's user-generated cable channel. I don't mean people dancing in the streets; I mean an outline of North Carolina pulsating. The channel is carrying, on live TV, headlines you could read on Digg and messages you could read on Twitter, along with video snippets from current viewers. Other than that, it's offering the same kind of exit-poll projections you could get on CNN, but in hot pink and cyan instead of the traditional red-blue-gold color scheme. Digg founder Kevin Rose pops up occasionally with live updates from a San Francisco night club where Current, Digg, and Twitter are hosting an election-night party. It's Web 2.0 in your living room — and it makes me wish I could Brillo-pad the "vision" out of "television." More »

Kevin Rose runs from the crowd

Owen Thomas — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 17:00:00 EDT

Why is Kevin Rose on a publicity binge? In the past two months, the founder of headline-voting site Digg has garnered two magazine covers. There he is, with a smoldering leer on local San Francisco magazine 7x7. The look reminds everyone why Diggnation cohost Alex Albrecht once said that Rose, a prolific dater, has "plowed through everyone in town." For Inc., Rose participated in a wacky crowd shoot which echoed the Beatles' "A Hard Day's Night." It's obvious why Rose is a hot commodity: Write about him, and traffic to your magazine's website will soar. (Will he sell print copies? I doubt Digg users visit newsstands.) More »

Traffic is the new profit

Owen Thomas — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 19:00:00 EDT

We're not sure we buy Inc. magazine's cover math, any more than we believed BusinessWeek when that magazine told us Digg founder Kevin Rose was worth $60 million. But the cover is impressive. (As are Rose's biceps. Photoshop?) Your suggestions for captions are welcome in the comments; the best will become the post's new headline. Yesterday's winner: DrewFinch, for "All your data are belong to us." (Photo by aprilini) More »

Digg users even smarter than we thought

Paul Boutin — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 19:20:00 EDT

Layoff-driven journalism: "Let's expose all the patterns in the media! It'll be great for us! Don't forget to link to our previous coverage." Owen, please listen to what readers are telling us: Bury, bury, bury. More »

5 reasons to Digg this article now

Owen Thomas — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 12:40:00 EDT

In "King of Digg," GangstaDawg4Life takes on FroggietheDestroyer! This is the future of media. Kevin Rose conceived Digg, his so-called social news site, as an experiment in democratizing the consumption of news. Rose's formula: Get rid of middleman editors. Replace them with the wisdom of crowds. Or so he says. But while he was starting Digg, Rose was a TV host on G4TV, the cable channel about videogames. That's the secret of Digg's success: It's a videogame. An old-school journalist would wonder: "Why do they keep score on individual submissions? Doesn't that reveal which of your stories were believed most, or at least read most? Damn, there goes my Pulitzer!" But now, Rose and company are fighting with Digg's most active users, trying to blunt their success. Here are five reasons — from a 13-year veteran of MSM formulas — why Digg's management should hug their top Diggers even tighter. More »

Former Digg programmer ready for his book deal ... hello? Hello?

Paul Boutin — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 16:40:00 EDT

"Anyone out there who would like to talk about a book contract, I think I have some compelling material, given the right deal," trolls Owen Byrne, who left Digg for the presumably more stable workplace at TravelPod, a travel-blogging site launched in 1997 and now part of the Expedia network of sites. Book agents, Byrne's full pitch after the jump. No fighting! More »