I think if digg changed their entire concept around into one that takes all of the news and combines stories into threads, ala techmeme, they'd be a king again. I'd love to have the stories from TC, read write web, and all the other blogs on a particular topic consolidated into one story with links to the externals, an intelligent description created from all the posts combined, and maybe even a little meter to weigh the particular blogs/sites involved.<p>Right now Digg is just adding to the information overload. I think we're all pretty exhausted with information. I'll see something pop up on twitter, I'll see it here as well, or on my RSS reader from another site. We're all talking about similar things. We need a global sort of decentralized "permalink" concept. Digg has the resources to do this. They can "digg" the web, instead of me digging stories. They'll find out what's hot via continuing user submissions, observing the twittersphere, popular blogs, etc... and then report to me a summary of everything regarding, for example, OpenSolaris being canned.<p>Yet another chaotic "stream of conciousness" comment from me... but I'm just getting the discussion going.<p>EDIT: this could work for everything... I obviously care mostly about tech and shy away from politics, but it would be cool to have all topics of a particular issue, with their weight on the political spectrum. Just another example.
I'd say this is extremely poor timing considering the backlash that version 4.0 of digg.com has been getting. It reeks of knee-jerk-ism.<p>It really surprises me that nobody in the boardroom thought to say: "This might look bad. Let's hold off for a couple weeks until the buzz dies off."
Seems to me that digg is having a myspace moment. It's failed to keep up with innovation as the world has changed around it. Digg's value-add has been left in the dust by more targeted sites (reddit, HN, even twitter, facebook, failblog, 4chan, etc.), and they can't fix that problem without fundamentally reinventing digg.
Its not as bad as taking the MySpace CEO position, but what would Digg's CEO do to really grow a business like that? Could it ever be a $100M+ revenue, profitable company for the long term?<p>They have taken $40M in funding, have 50+ employees and I have no idea what their revenue is, but I bet its under $15M for for selling ads.<p>Good luck to them, hope he has the courage/support to do something radical.
Digg never seemed like the kind of company that was run by an engineering culture. It feels like a MySpace type of company, where they have good marketing / media people but not about the technology and platform. One thing that suggests this is that most of the early engineering talent has left [<a href="http://atomized.org/2010/08/they-can%E2%80%99t-go-back/" rel="nofollow">http://atomized.org/2010/08/they-can%E2%80%99t-go-back/</a>] , which is not something you see at Google, Facebook, or even Reddit. The new CEO might benefit from turning this around to avoid disasters like v4.
Poor Williams! So Rose says to the guy, "Here you go ... I broke everything and chased away our most loyal users and now I’m leaving you to stand behind it and defend it. Have fun!"
This comic strip might be one of the most insightful contributions to the topic: <a href="http://ncomment.com/blog/" rel="nofollow">http://ncomment.com/blog/</a>
They seriously didn't have v4 in beta long enough. I got accepted to the beta a little while back and it had lots of issues even then with the broken axle and other errors. For a change that substantial, they really should have had a very long beta period where they slowly brought people in.<p>I was shocked when I heard it was going live because I knew from the beta that it wasn't even close to ready.
This shouldn't be of any shock to anyone. Rose is not a CEO type and has admitted so in the past. When he launched Digg he promptly went to his known acquaintance, Jay Adelson, to lead the company while he remained as the chief architect. It was only time until he found somebody else to take control of Digg while he led the charge in his prior role.<p>Is it a coincidence that the replacement came in right after a poor launch? We could speculate that all day but this CEO was likely already inbound before the launch. Today just marked it official.
What a nightmare. I think Digg v4 should have been launched as a separate startup, helmed by Kevin ala Pownce. It's just too different, and it looks like they may have killed the goose that laid the golden egg. What a disaster..
Can someone please un-editorialize the title?<p>The CEO transition has been planned for months. It may be poorly timed, but the title of this link makes it sound like he's resigning due to the v4 launch issues.
It's kind of telling that the digg blog now has the same blue that twitter's blog has. Hopefully the CEO can do something about the complete absence of original thought.
Anyone have insight into the timing of this? I understand they have been looking for someone for a while and this timing may simply be a result of an ongoing process coming to a close... but at the same time I'm sure there has been a lot going on internally at Digg since the launch of v4. Either way, the recent Digg events have been very public and very interesting. I think there is a decent amount to be learned from all this, or at least that is how I am rationalizing closely watching this all unfold.
What a cop out. Kevin Rose has been hyping Digg v4 for months. He should stand behind his product, his vision, his creation. He should go down with a fight.
One of these sites just needs to install a sliding bar at the top. All the way to the left is Failblog pictures. All the way to the right is academic articles. Build this.
I feel bad for Kevin, to be stepped down from his own startup, it was his idea, it was his money, and now some VC guys just throw him out of the window. I don't believe Kevin just stepped down because of the V4 fail. Specially when he just became CEO again a couple of months ago.<p>Digg just became a zombie site, as a user, everytime I visit I feel like i'm visiting my RSS reader, it just doesn't feel to have any human interaction except for the comments.<p>Would it be pretty bad if they rolled back to V3 ? I mean...this version 4 is really not working out for anyone.
Just like Technorati, Digg's failure at coming up with a business model that doesn't annoy it's entire userbase has rapidly faded it into irrelevancy. Does Digg have a lot of hardware? I hope they use dovebid, so I won't have to register with a new auction site for the bankruptcy specials.