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Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,

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Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.

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Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio and how the tech

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Speaker 1: are you. It's a Friday, which means it's time for

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Speaker 1: a classic episode of tech Stuff. This episode originally published

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Speaker 1: way back on May fifth, twenty seventeen. It is called

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Speaker 1: the Dig Story. Digg known as the homepage of the Internet,

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Speaker 1: at least once upon a time. It still exists. It's

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Speaker 1: not like it's gone, but it certainly has changed a

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Speaker 1: great deal since its founding. So let's listen to this

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Speaker 1: classic episode about Dig. Today we're going to explore the

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Speaker 1: story of dig dot com, what it was, how it

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Speaker 1: came about, and exactly why. Some people say it serves

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Speaker 1: as a lesson in community mismanagement. It's very interesting. First,

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Speaker 1: let me give you a quick overview of what dig

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Speaker 1: was all about, and to some extent, is still about,

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Speaker 1: though the current incarnation of dig is very different from

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Speaker 1: what was thought of as Dig back in the day.

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Speaker 1: So do you know Reddit? Okay, that's kind of what

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Speaker 1: Dig was. Dig was essentially a lot like what Reddit

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Speaker 1: is now, and a lot of people who used Dig

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Speaker 1: abandoned it for Reddit, and we'll talk about why in

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Speaker 1: this episode. But more specifically, Dig was a site where

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Speaker 1: users could share links to web pages, and it was

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Speaker 1: part social network, part news aggregator, and it set itself

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Speaker 1: apart from other services with similar functions, Like there was

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Speaker 1: dell ish Shuss. You might remember that you old timers

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Speaker 1: of the Internet. That was sort of a bookmarking app

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Speaker 1: where you could link to a page that you intend

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Speaker 1: to go back to over and over and you could

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Speaker 1: easily share those bookmarks with other people. But the whole

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Speaker 1: purpose was this was a reference you intended to return

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Speaker 1: to repeatedly. That's not really what Dig was interested in.

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Speaker 1: They were more about sharing links to timely pieces of

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Speaker 1: content like news articles, for example, and then users on

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Speaker 1: Dig's site could vote. They could boost a topic further

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Speaker 1: up the main page, or they could end up knocking

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Speaker 1: it down the main page. Boosting was called digging. You

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Speaker 1: would dig an article or a link and say that's awesome.

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Speaker 1: I want that promoted because I think it's really interesting.

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Speaker 1: If you wanted to vote it down, you buried it.

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Speaker 1: So there was digging and burying, which is odd because

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Speaker 1: if we're talking about the physical act. That's very similar,

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Speaker 1: but in this case, digging means I dig it. Bury

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Speaker 1: means let's bury that story. It's not interesting, it doesn't

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Speaker 1: belong here. It was also meant to allow users to

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Speaker 1: determine which stories were the most relevant and interesting, and

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Speaker 1: they were to have control. Really, the idea was that

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Speaker 1: the users of the site determined what went on the

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Speaker 1: site and how that content was arranged based upon their actions.

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Speaker 1: So it gave a lot of control to its user base,

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Speaker 1: and that had a real appeal to it, right, And

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Speaker 1: we'll dive more into Dig in just a little bit. Also,

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Speaker 1: just in the interest of full disclosure, I should point

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Speaker 1: out that while I don't personally know the founders of dig,

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Speaker 1: we have never really officially met. I think I met

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Speaker 1: Kevin Rose once, but I know a lot of folks

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Speaker 1: who are friends with them, so we have a lot

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Speaker 1: of friends in common. And over the years, some of

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Speaker 1: the stuff that was going on over at dig kind

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Speaker 1: of made its way to my ears through the grapevine,

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Speaker 1: you know, just basic gossip type stuff. Now, fortunately, because

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Speaker 1: I'm me, I've forgotten almost all of that. I have

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Speaker 1: no I remember hearing a lot about Dig back in

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Speaker 1: the day, but I didn't retain any of that information.

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Speaker 1: I never really used DIG that much myself, so it

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Speaker 1: never took hold in my brain. However, I thought it

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Speaker 1: was important for me to disclose the fact that at

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Speaker 1: least I know some of the same people that the

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Speaker 1: founders knew, that we ran in the same circles, just

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Speaker 1: to disclose that. But I don't think any biases have

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Speaker 1: crept through in my reporting of this because my memory

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Speaker 1: is so bad. It's not that I am so ethical,

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Speaker 1: it's that my brain just didn't hold onto the information.

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Speaker 1: I'd like to think I would be ethical if my

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Speaker 1: brain did hold onto it. But we'll never know, now,

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Speaker 1: will we. Anyway. The founders of Dig included Jay Addelson,

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Speaker 1: Ron Gorrigetsky owen Burn, and Kevin Rose. They started development

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Speaker 1: on the site back in October two thousand and four,

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Speaker 1: and they launched dig on December fourth or fifth, two

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Speaker 1: thousand and four. So let's talk a bit about each

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Speaker 1: of those guys and what they brought to DIG. First,

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Speaker 1: we're gonna mention Jay Adelson. He came from Detroit and

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Speaker 1: he grew up in as cecil of Welcome to Nightville

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Speaker 1: would say, he grew up in Michigan. He got a

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Speaker 1: degree in film and broadcasting with a concentration in computer

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Speaker 1: science from Boston University in nineteen ninety two. After he graduated,

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Speaker 1: he worked for companies like the ISP, the Internet service

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Speaker 1: provider Netcom. He helped design the Palo Alto Internet Exchange,

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Speaker 1: and he later founded a company called Equinix, which was

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Speaker 1: another Internet data center and infrastructure company. So his yorick

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Speaker 1: was primarily on the inner workings of the systems that

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Speaker 1: the Internet itself depends upon, you know, not websites or

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Speaker 1: but rather the actual infrastructure that allows computers to communicate

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Speaker 1: with each other. He worked a lot on those those

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Speaker 1: sort of systems, and it was actually in his job

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Speaker 1: at Equinox, where the company he had co founded, where

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Speaker 1: he would first meet Kevin Rose, you know, one of

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Speaker 1: the other co founders of DIG, probably the most famous

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Speaker 1: of the founders of DIG. Kevin Rose at the time

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Speaker 1: was doing a segment for a show called The Screen Savers,

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Speaker 1: and I'll mention that show again when I get to

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Speaker 1: Kevin Addison would then become the business manager for Dig

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Speaker 1: once it became an official thing. He used his experience

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Speaker 1: to hire the initial management team for the company and

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Speaker 1: it was Adilson who led the charge in raising venture

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Speaker 1: capital shortly after dig launched. He would also become the

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Speaker 1: company's CEO in two thousand and five, and he would

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Speaker 1: co found Revision three along with Kevin Rose, also in

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Speaker 1: two thousand and five. Ron Gordetski is a software engineer.

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Speaker 1: He studied at the University of California, San Diego, and

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Speaker 1: his role on the team was to be the system's

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Speaker 1: engineering manager. Gorgetsky would also co found Revision three later on,

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Speaker 1: so he was one of those members. Revision three initially

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Speaker 1: was kind of a podcasting and video arm of dig

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Speaker 1: It sort of existed as its own thing, and it

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Speaker 1: sort of existed as an extension of dig itself. Gorydetski

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Speaker 1: also co founded a company later on on called Flick.

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Speaker 1: Had two f's in the beginning is fflick, so flick.

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Speaker 1: It was a film news and reviews site that based

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Speaker 1: its information off of Twitter posts. Google eventually would acquire

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Speaker 1: Flick in twenty eleven, and Gordetski went on to work

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Speaker 1: for YouTube until twenty sixteen. Owen Burn, the third co founder,

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Speaker 1: built the PHP code for the original dig site, and

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Speaker 1: you might be saying, well, what is PHP. PHP is

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Speaker 1: an irritating acronym because it's a recursive acronym, which means

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Speaker 1: that it has its own acronym in its full name.

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Speaker 1: The full name is PHP Hypertext Processor, which isn't a

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Speaker 1: very satisfying answer if I ask you what is PHP.

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Speaker 1: It's a general purpose scripting language and its open source

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Speaker 1: and it can be embedded into HTML. So essentially, what

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Speaker 1: Burne's job was was building out the framework for the

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Speaker 1: original dig site and to add in the functionality of

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Speaker 1: the basic purposes for DIG. So he was responsible for

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Speaker 1: making sure that he could actually develop the the basic

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Speaker 1: functions that DIG had when it launched. In return, he

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Speaker 1: was rewarded with equity in the company itself, so he

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Speaker 1: had some ownership of DIG when it first launched, and

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Speaker 1: his title was senior software engineer and co founder. He

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Speaker 1: would stay on with DIG until two thousand and seven.

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Speaker 1: Then we get to Kevin Rose, who is two freaking

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Speaker 1: years younger than I am. Multi millionaire Kevin Rose two

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Speaker 1: years younger than I am. I gotta be fair. The

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Speaker 1: dude's brilliant. He's a very intelligent guy, so I can't

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Speaker 1: really fault him. It's just a case of sour grapes

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Speaker 1: with me. He has founded numerous startups, including not only Dig,

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Speaker 1: but also Revision three, a company called Pounce, and another

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Speaker 1: one called milk Now. He got his start on the

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Speaker 1: tech TV series The Screen Savers. He originally came on

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Speaker 1: to tech TV as an it kind of guy, but

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Speaker 1: eventually he started to work behind the scenes as a

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Speaker 1: production assistant for The Screen Savers, and gradually he transitioned

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Speaker 1: to appearing on camera and eventually became a co host

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Speaker 1: of the Screen Savers itself. When Leo Laporte left the show,

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Speaker 1: Kevin Rose kind of stepped into Leo Laporte's role on

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Speaker 1: the Screen Savers. Later on, Comcast would acquire tech TV

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Speaker 1: and merge it with another channel called G four, and

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Speaker 1: Kevin Rose initially would transition over with the G four team,

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Speaker 1: but by two thousand and five he negotiated his release

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Speaker 1: from his contract with G four, and of course, by

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Speaker 1: that time Dig had already become a thing. It had

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Speaker 1: launched in late two thousand and four. It was Rose

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Speaker 1: and Allison who first came up with the idea for

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Speaker 1: a social news aggregation service, and Kevin Rose decided he

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Speaker 1: would pay for this initial development out of his own pocket.

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Speaker 1: He took six thousand dollars of his own savings to

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Speaker 1: fund the building of the dig initial build, so it

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Speaker 1: really was his money. I mean, he believed in this

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Speaker 1: enough to put his own cash down. It wasn't a

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Speaker 1: case of him asking for loans from other people. He

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Speaker 1: was twenty seven years old at the time. The co

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Speaker 1: founders settled on the name dig because they originally wanted

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Speaker 1: Dig with one G. But they had a problem. Disney

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Speaker 1: had already registered the urlwww dot dig dot com. And

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Speaker 1: I don't know if you know this, but Disney's not

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Speaker 1: in the habit of giving up property that it owns typically,

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Speaker 1: so they decide instead to go with two g's and

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Speaker 1: get around that problem. They launched the site on December fifth,

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Speaker 1: two thousand and four, and on December thirteenth, two thousand

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Speaker 1: and four, Kevin Rose would mention dig dot com on

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Speaker 1: an episode of The screen Savers, so he essentially got

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Speaker 1: to use the screen Savers to promote this other project

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Speaker 1: he had done. He was co hosting the screen Savers

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Speaker 1: at the time, so he took the time to say, Hey,

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Speaker 1: we've got this new project called dig dot com. It's

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Speaker 1: a user generated news aggregator site. And it's a way

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Speaker 1: for us to really concentrate on the coolest stories out

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Speaker 1: there on the inner And so the site began to

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Speaker 1: gather users pretty slowly but steadily at first, and back

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Speaker 1: then the site was really simple. It listed stories by

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Speaker 1: brief headlines, which were also links, so you could click

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Speaker 1: on the little headline, which was user generated. People would

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Speaker 1: type out what they thought the story essentially was. That

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Speaker 1: would be your hypertext link to take you to the story.

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Speaker 1: They would also include a brief summary of what the

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Speaker 1: story was about. And the more users clicked dig as

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Speaker 1: in I like this on a story, the higher it

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Speaker 1: would appear on the main page. And as some stories

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Speaker 1: would climb up obviously other stories had to drop down lower.

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Speaker 1: And if a story dropped down low enough, it would

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Speaker 1: eventually roll over to the second page of dig. And

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Speaker 1: this is very much like search engines. A lot of

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Speaker 1: people will only pay attention to that first page. They

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Speaker 1: don't want to dig further down into the pages. So

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Speaker 1: once you end up on page two, it it's really

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Speaker 1: you see a massive drop off on traffic to that link.

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Speaker 1: This is true for Reddit, it's true for dig Or,

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Speaker 1: it was true for dig and it's true for search

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Speaker 1: engines as well. Being on that main page is prime

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Speaker 1: real estate. And if you were burying a story enough,

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Speaker 1: if enough users buried a story, it would drop off entirely.

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Speaker 1: And the only way you could see it from that

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Speaker 1: point forward is if you enabled an option in your

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Speaker 1: user profile to view things that had been buried off

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Speaker 1: the page in search results. So you could search for

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Speaker 1: something that had been buried off the page and you

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Speaker 1: could find it that way, but only if you enabled

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Speaker 1: that option in your profile. It was really all about

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Speaker 1: driving engagement and community activity. And you might want to

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Speaker 1: know what the first few dig stories were, like, what

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Speaker 1: appeared on Dig's site when it launched. What were the

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Speaker 1: top ten stories of dig dot com when it went live?

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Speaker 1: I got a list for you. Story number one was

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Speaker 1: cherryos delayed till Q one of two thousand and five,

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Speaker 1: And that raises the question, what the heck was CHERRYOS. Well,

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Speaker 1: that was a power PC G four emulator for Windows,

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Speaker 1: which is a fancy way of saying it was a

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Speaker 1: program meant to simulate an Apple operating system so that

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Speaker 1: Windows PC users could actually run Apple programs on Windows XP.

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Speaker 1: It was an emulator. It emulated the Apple operating system,

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Speaker 1: or rather the Apple processor, not really the operating system anyway.

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Speaker 1: Back in late two thousand and four, it was apparently

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Speaker 1: big news that the program was experiencing delays. It would

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Speaker 1: eventually come out on March eighth, two thousand and five,

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Speaker 1: in case you're curious, Not that it's relevant anymore, but

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Speaker 1: there you go. Story number two said that Creative declares

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Speaker 1: war against the iPod. Actually it said delare's war against

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Speaker 1: the iPod. It left in a typo, but we know

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Speaker 1: they meant declare, and this ties into that topic I

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Speaker 1: covered not too long ago about the history of MP

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Speaker 1: three players. You might remember that Creative was one of

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Speaker 1: the companies designing MP three players back in the day,

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Speaker 1: and then Apple's iPod rose up to challenge Creative and

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Speaker 1: other companies. So this was a story that tied into

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Speaker 1: that the idea that these two companies were at war

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Speaker 1: with each other. Both of those first two links, cherryos

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Speaker 1: and Creative, were submitted by anonymous users. But the third

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Speaker 1: story wasn't. That story was rumors next iPod to have

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Speaker 1: downloadable games, and this was a story that Kevin Rose

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Speaker 1: himself submitted to dig back in the early development days

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Speaker 1: for the website. When they were still building out the site.

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Speaker 1: He submitted this. It managed to become pop seventy three

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Speaker 1: days before it was even submitted to the website, according

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Speaker 1: to the statistics on the page itself, which is kind

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Speaker 1: of funny because you could argue this is a bit

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Speaker 1: of foreshadowing for some of Diggs's later problems. But honestly,

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Speaker 1: this was probably just to test out the features before

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Speaker 1: they launched it. I don't think there was any real

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Speaker 1: attempt to game the system this early on. It was

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Speaker 1: more about making sure the website did what they wanted

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Speaker 1: it to do before they launched the site. Story number

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Speaker 1: four was one about a torrent search engine. I've done

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Speaker 1: episodes about torrents in the past if you want to

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Speaker 1: hear more about that. That was another submission from Kevin Rose,

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Speaker 1: and some people argue it was Rose attempting to get

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Speaker 1: a leg up by dominating Google Search for torrents search

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Speaker 1: because it was a very popular topic back in the

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Speaker 1: day still is to some extent. Story five was about

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Speaker 1: the Logitech Z fifty three hundred and five point one

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Speaker 1: surround speaker system, probably obsolete at this point. Keep in

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Speaker 1: mind that Rose was coming from a tech review and

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Speaker 1: talk show background. So it's not a huge shock that

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Speaker 1: almost all of the stories on dig back in the

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Speaker 1: day were technology related. But then comes story number six.

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Speaker 1: This was a major story one I think we all agree,

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Speaker 1: burst free from the tech centric nature of the other stories.

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Speaker 1: This was buy one, get one free jamba juice. Sadly,

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Speaker 1: thirteen years later, this offer no longer applies. They laughed

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Speaker 1: me out of the store. Story seven was called Ben's Bargains.

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Speaker 1: There was no possessive apostrophe after the end for Ben.

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Speaker 1: The name Ben b e n, so Ben's bargains. I

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Speaker 1: assume they mean bargains that belonged to Ben. I wish

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Speaker 1: I could tell you what the story was about, but uh,

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Speaker 1: later on it got deleted or merged into another story,

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Speaker 1: so it's all lost on me. I suppose Ben had

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Speaker 1: a bargain and I missed it, bummer. Story eight was

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Speaker 1: a headline called Cascading Style cheat Sheet, so this goes

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Speaker 1: back to talking about development creating cascading styles. Story nine

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Speaker 1: was blog box applications, and story ten was I don't

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Speaker 1: know because it disappeared. It was deleted and not archived

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Speaker 1: in time, so I guess story ten is story not

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Speaker 1: appearing in this podcast anyway. Those were the ten, well

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Speaker 1: nine stories that first appeared on Dig when it premiered.

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Speaker 1: Now I've got a lot more to say about Dig,

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Speaker 1: how it developed and how it eventually imploded, but before

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Speaker 1: I get into that, let's take a quick break to

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Speaker 1: thank our sponsor, all right. So, one of the early

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Speaker 1: features that Dig built into its system was comments. Users

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Speaker 1: could leave comments about links. They could actually start up

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Speaker 1: an entire comment thread, so it turned Dig into kind

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Speaker 1: of a forum about news items. It wasn't just a

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Speaker 1: place to share or promote or bury news. It was

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Speaker 1: also a place to discuss it. And of course users

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Speaker 1: could end up burying a news item and make it

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Speaker 1: drop off the list entirely if they felt that it

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Speaker 1: was merited. Sometimes people would try to spam Dig, especially

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Speaker 1: in those early days. I mean really, it was true

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Speaker 1: for the entire history of Dig, because you've got people

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Speaker 1: who just like to cause mischief. So there were people

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Speaker 1: who were trying to spam the page, and luckily the

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Speaker 1: berry function allowed the community to respond and to get

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Speaker 1: rid of stuff that was just cluttering things up. The

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Speaker 1: same was true for anyone who was seen to be

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Speaker 1: promoting something that was self serving, So For example, if

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Speaker 1: I were to try and share an article that I

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Speaker 1: had written on how stuff works to Dig directly, that

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Speaker 1: would not look so great, right. It was meant to

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Speaker 1: be a place where people discovered stuff and shared it

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Speaker 1: with others, as opposed to promoting their own work. That

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Speaker 1: was the other purpose for the Barry button was to

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Speaker 1: make sure that this was truly a democratized user generated

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Speaker 1: experience and not something that was dictated to them. More

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Speaker 1: on that as we progress now. The engineers that did

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Speaker 1: create an algorithm to determine if a story merited inclusion

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Speaker 1: on the main site or, in a later revision of dig,

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Speaker 1: on one of its major sub sections. So like Reddit,

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Speaker 1: Dig would eventually become divided into departments like gaming, Lifestyle, Entertainment, sports, science, technology, World,

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Speaker 1: and Business, and also the offbeat category. And of course

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Speaker 1: there was the main site, the main page that you

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Speaker 1: would go to if you went to dig dot com.

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Speaker 1: That was the primo real estate on dig. That's where

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Speaker 1: if you wrote a story, that's the page you wanted

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Speaker 1: it to show up on, sort of like the main

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Speaker 1: page on Reddit. Very much the same. Dig also created

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Speaker 1: a button that other sites could host on their own pages,

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Speaker 1: so you could include this bit of code in your

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Speaker 1: web page's HTML file, and a little button that would

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Speaker 1: would pop up on your page that would allow you

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Speaker 1: to have users click on it and submit content directly

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Speaker 1: from your page to Dig. That would let people either

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Speaker 1: submit a story entirely or to vote up or vote

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Speaker 1: up a story. Really, you'd had to go to dig

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Speaker 1: if you wanted to bury it. But once upon a

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Speaker 1: time you could dig stories on HowStuffWorks dot com. I

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Speaker 1: think we even we had a big button that was

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Speaker 1: active for quite some time before we did a site revision.

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Speaker 1: But yeah, it was one of those where if you

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Speaker 1: wanted to share what you saw, then you could click

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Speaker 1: on the dig button. It's very similar to the way

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Speaker 1: a lot of sites use Facebook and Twitter buttons today.

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Speaker 1: In fact, you could argue that Dig sort of paved

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Speaker 1: the way for those other sites to use that same

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Speaker 1: kind of functionality. Further down the road, Kevin Rose would

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Speaker 1: also launch a video podcast with Alex Albrecht called Dignation

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Speaker 1: that was one of the cornerstones of Revision three. That

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Speaker 1: video and podcast arm that I talked about that they

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Speaker 1: launched in late two thousand and five. They used Dignation

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Speaker 1: to talk about some of the top stories featured on Dig,

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Speaker 1: and the first episode published in two thousand and five,

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Speaker 1: several months after Dig had already launched. Depending upon what

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Speaker 1: source you look at, some people say it Dig started

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Speaker 1: or Dignation started in May one, two thousand and five.

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Speaker 1: Others say July first, two thousand and five, which seems

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Speaker 1: like a pretty big discrepancy. I was not listening to

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Speaker 1: Dignation at that time, so I cannot independently verify that

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Speaker 1: either way. But anyway, Dig launched in December two thousand

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Speaker 1: and four, so a few months later you get Dignation.

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Speaker 1: And one of the purposes for Dignation was to talk

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Speaker 1: about stories that had made their way on to Dig

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Speaker 1: and just to be kind of a discussion forum for it.

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Speaker 1: And so in a way it became a promotion for

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Speaker 1: the dig dot com website, and the two hosts were

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Speaker 1: really personable and funny and informed, and so it started

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Speaker 1: getting popular pretty quickly. One of the top stories that

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Speaker 1: very first episode was to talk about a major revision

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Speaker 1: to Dig, which was it was not even a year

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Speaker 1: old yet and Dig version two point zero was coming out.

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Speaker 1: And also it didn't hurt that Kevin Rose and Alex

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Speaker 1: Albrecht would drink a few beers on camera because it

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Speaker 1: made them more personable. They didn't get tore up on camera,

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Speaker 1: not typically anyway. Their shows could get a little rowdy

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Speaker 1: when they would do live shows at say south By Southwest,

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Speaker 1: but generally speaking, it just made them seem like approachable

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Speaker 1: human beings who were talking about cool stories. So it

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Speaker 1: was a really appealing pair that had a very approachable style,

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Speaker 1: and it led to great success for Dignation at least

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Speaker 1: for several years. I only ever saw them once at

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Speaker 1: south By Southwest, it was just before they concluded the show.

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Speaker 1: In October two thousand and five, Dig reached out to

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Speaker 1: venture capitalysts to get some funding. Remember, Kevin Rose funded

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Speaker 1: the initial launch of Dig with six thousand dollars of

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Speaker 1: his own money. The company managed to raise a cool

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Speaker 1: two and a half million dollars from various sources, including

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Speaker 1: the founder of Mosaic and Netscape, Mark Andresen. The user

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Speaker 1: base for Dig started to grow. It grew pretty steadily.

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Speaker 1: It hit eight hundred thousand users within eighteen months of launching,

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Speaker 1: which is pretty impressive. Eight hundred thousand registered users, it's

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Speaker 1: not bad, and the development team was busy adding more

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Speaker 1: functionality during that whole time, not only did they create

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Speaker 1: that tag system that allowed dig to divide up stories

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Speaker 1: into different divisions like whether it was technology or science

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Speaker 1: or whatever, but they also started looking into other features

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Speaker 1: as well, like a friend system where you could befriend

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Speaker 1: other users and follow the kind of stuff that they liked.

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Speaker 1: Maybe you might share a common interest with someone, and

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Speaker 1: that way it gave you even more opportunities to discover

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Speaker 1: cool stories that maybe weren't on the main page when

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Speaker 1: you log in, but because your friend liked it, you

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Speaker 1: would be able to see more about it. So that

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Speaker 1: was a but what really made dig turn more into

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Speaker 1: kind of a social network than just a news aggregator.

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Speaker 1: Really the name of the game was diversification. They really

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Speaker 1: helped Dig a lot because when it first started, it

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Speaker 1: was almost exclusively focused on technology. You remember when I

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Speaker 1: was listing out those first ten stories, but first nine stories,

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Speaker 1: eight of them were about tech. Only one was not

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Speaker 1: directly about technology. So it had a limited appeal for

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Speaker 1: a very particular audience. Let's call them nerds, because I

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Speaker 1: am a nerd, I have a nerd podcast. I'm doing

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Speaker 1: it right now. I'm not calling you guys nerds, but

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Speaker 1: I'm a nerd, so Dig really had an appeal to

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Speaker 1: nerds when it first started, and again no disrespect, I

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Speaker 1: consider myself one. But by two thousand and six the

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Speaker 1: site had really branched out with these other categories like

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Speaker 1: sports and entertainment and lifestyle, and so it had a

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Speaker 1: broader appeal. It was no longer just for technology enthusiasts.

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Speaker 1: It was for anybody who wanted to learn about the

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Speaker 1: coolest stories that were breaking in their particular area of interest.

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Speaker 1: Another adjustment helped add some credibility to Dig. They decided

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Speaker 1: to add in the capability for users to report stories

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00:27:21,880 --> 00:27:26,400
Speaker 1: as being inaccurate. So there's a lot of talk today

432
00:27:26,560 --> 00:27:32,440
Speaker 1: about fake news, about sites that generate articles that are

433
00:27:32,480 --> 00:27:37,840
Speaker 1: not really reflective of reality that end up being misleading

434
00:27:38,200 --> 00:27:42,840
Speaker 1: or complete fabrications or lies, or they are trying to

435
00:27:42,840 --> 00:27:47,280
Speaker 1: be satire but they never really succeed in being satire. Well,

436
00:27:47,480 --> 00:27:50,119
Speaker 1: Dig built in this tool so that users could point

437
00:27:50,119 --> 00:27:53,639
Speaker 1: that out and those links could then be pulled from

438
00:27:53,760 --> 00:27:57,000
Speaker 1: the various pages on Dig so that they weren't cluttering

439
00:27:57,040 --> 00:28:02,000
Speaker 1: things up. They also had filters to help catch profanity

440
00:28:02,320 --> 00:28:04,840
Speaker 1: to help cut down on some flame wars that could

441
00:28:04,880 --> 00:28:06,800
Speaker 1: go on in comments. As it turns out, when you

442
00:28:06,920 --> 00:28:10,439
Speaker 1: let people comment, some people take advantage of that and

443
00:28:10,520 --> 00:28:14,399
Speaker 1: abuse the system, So they tried to deal with that

444
00:28:14,480 --> 00:28:16,280
Speaker 1: as best they could. They also wanted to make sure

445
00:28:16,280 --> 00:28:19,639
Speaker 1: that they could filter out profanity in the headlines and

446
00:28:19,880 --> 00:28:24,040
Speaker 1: stories themselves. It was a case of trying to make

447
00:28:24,119 --> 00:28:26,720
Speaker 1: sure that people were using Dig for the weight they

448
00:28:26,720 --> 00:28:29,439
Speaker 1: had intended it to be used, and not for it

449
00:28:29,480 --> 00:28:32,440
Speaker 1: to turn into just the wild West, And it also

450
00:28:32,480 --> 00:28:37,080
Speaker 1: showed that they still cared about how DIG operated. In

451
00:28:37,160 --> 00:28:41,400
Speaker 1: August two thousand and six, BusinessWeek featured Kevin Rose on

452
00:28:41,440 --> 00:28:45,280
Speaker 1: the cover of its magazine, and Revision III, that podcasting

453
00:28:45,320 --> 00:28:48,680
Speaker 1: company that Rose and as co founders, launched in late

454
00:28:48,680 --> 00:28:52,200
Speaker 1: two thousand and five, helped Dig secure another million dollars

455
00:28:52,400 --> 00:28:57,040
Speaker 1: in venture capital funding. At this point, Dig itself was

456
00:28:57,280 --> 00:29:02,640
Speaker 1: estimated to be valued at two hundred fifty million dollars

457
00:29:02,720 --> 00:29:06,280
Speaker 1: according to The New York Post, so less than two

458
00:29:06,400 --> 00:29:08,960
Speaker 1: years after it had launched, and it was worth a

459
00:29:09,200 --> 00:29:14,120
Speaker 1: quarter of a billion dollars two hundred and fifty million dollars.

460
00:29:14,120 --> 00:29:19,040
Speaker 1: That's crazy, but understandable when you realize this was a

461
00:29:19,120 --> 00:29:22,360
Speaker 1: powerful tool for people to share their interests and it

462
00:29:22,400 --> 00:29:28,000
Speaker 1: was driving insane traffic to other websites. Now, in two

463
00:29:28,000 --> 00:29:30,360
Speaker 1: thousand and seven, Kevin Rose said in a few interviews

464
00:29:30,360 --> 00:29:32,360
Speaker 1: that he was initially a little worried about the types

465
00:29:32,400 --> 00:29:35,520
Speaker 1: of content that could end up on dig because he

466
00:29:35,600 --> 00:29:37,680
Speaker 1: was worried that it might require a lot of policing

467
00:29:37,720 --> 00:29:39,640
Speaker 1: to make sure that the worst stuff on the Internet

468
00:29:39,680 --> 00:29:42,840
Speaker 1: didn't really just bully its way onto the main page.

469
00:29:43,200 --> 00:29:46,520
Speaker 1: But he said the community was consistently pretty good at

470
00:29:46,520 --> 00:29:50,560
Speaker 1: finding relevant, interesting stories and sharing them, and so really

471
00:29:50,600 --> 00:29:56,320
Speaker 1: the community in large part was policing itself fairly effectively. Now,

472
00:29:56,320 --> 00:29:59,440
Speaker 1: one time this didn't play out the way he wanted

473
00:30:00,400 --> 00:30:04,040
Speaker 1: was when someone posted a link to an encryption key

474
00:30:04,240 --> 00:30:08,880
Speaker 1: for HDDVD. Do you guys remember hddvds. That was the

475
00:30:08,920 --> 00:30:13,400
Speaker 1: format that was competing with Blu rays for high definition video.

476
00:30:14,120 --> 00:30:16,479
Speaker 1: And eventually, of course Blu ray won out, but for

477
00:30:16,520 --> 00:30:20,200
Speaker 1: a while it was a pretty tough competition, and the

478
00:30:20,320 --> 00:30:25,120
Speaker 1: encryption key would let you crack the protection around HDDVD,

479
00:30:25,240 --> 00:30:28,360
Speaker 1: which meant that you could then copy the content off

480
00:30:28,400 --> 00:30:32,880
Speaker 1: an HDDVD and potentially distribute it. And so a lot

481
00:30:32,920 --> 00:30:36,040
Speaker 1: of big companies were very upset about this, because you know,

482
00:30:36,120 --> 00:30:40,040
Speaker 1: they don't really like piracy for obvious reasons. It at

483
00:30:40,120 --> 00:30:43,760
Speaker 1: least is somewhat linked to a drop in revenue, although

484
00:30:43,760 --> 00:30:46,800
Speaker 1: you can't argue it's a one for one case, because

485
00:30:46,800 --> 00:30:49,000
Speaker 1: if someone steals something, that's not to say that they

486
00:30:49,000 --> 00:30:52,280
Speaker 1: would have bought it otherwise. Sometimes that's just just not true.

487
00:30:52,920 --> 00:30:55,360
Speaker 1: But sometimes if they steal something and share it, it

488
00:30:55,480 --> 00:30:58,520
Speaker 1: might end up costing you in sales. It's just impossible

489
00:30:58,560 --> 00:31:01,680
Speaker 1: to know to what extent right, because you can't guarantee

490
00:31:01,720 --> 00:31:04,360
Speaker 1: that all the people who download something would have otherwise

491
00:31:04,400 --> 00:31:08,560
Speaker 1: bought it. Still, it was a real problem. Now there's

492
00:31:08,680 --> 00:31:13,320
Speaker 1: nothing directly against the law from copying the content on

493
00:31:13,360 --> 00:31:16,160
Speaker 1: a piece of media that you have purchased for the

494
00:31:16,200 --> 00:31:22,320
Speaker 1: purposes of backup. However, having to circumvent encryption gets a

495
00:31:22,400 --> 00:31:25,040
Speaker 1: little more shady in the eyes of the law. So

496
00:31:25,240 --> 00:31:28,920
Speaker 1: while you could make a backup copy, you weren't supposed

497
00:31:28,960 --> 00:31:32,560
Speaker 1: to break encryption preventing you from making a backup copy.

498
00:31:32,800 --> 00:31:36,080
Speaker 1: And this is one of the many reasons why pirates

499
00:31:36,200 --> 00:31:41,040
Speaker 1: versus creators those battles get really ugly on both sides

500
00:31:42,000 --> 00:31:45,440
Speaker 1: because both sides have they do a lot of dancing

501
00:31:45,520 --> 00:31:50,120
Speaker 1: to justify their actions. I'll say that I don't necessarily

502
00:31:50,160 --> 00:31:54,200
Speaker 1: think that studios or creative companies are free of blame

503
00:31:54,320 --> 00:31:57,160
Speaker 1: in these cases. I also don't think that pirates are saints.

504
00:31:57,760 --> 00:32:01,520
Speaker 1: It's a complicated issue, all right. So Dig's owners kept

505
00:32:01,520 --> 00:32:04,840
Speaker 1: pulling down links to the encryption key that had been posted.

506
00:32:05,160 --> 00:32:07,560
Speaker 1: They were trying to head this off. They didn't want

507
00:32:07,600 --> 00:32:13,880
Speaker 1: to court a major lawsuit with a studio. They wanted

508
00:32:13,880 --> 00:32:16,080
Speaker 1: to avoid that. They didn't want anyone to be able

509
00:32:16,120 --> 00:32:20,400
Speaker 1: to say, hey, you're hosting this illegal encryption key that's

510
00:32:20,440 --> 00:32:24,600
Speaker 1: letting people bypass the security we put on hddvds. So

511
00:32:24,680 --> 00:32:27,160
Speaker 1: they were starting to pull down the links, but the

512
00:32:27,240 --> 00:32:29,720
Speaker 1: users wanted the links, and so they kept on posting them,

513
00:32:29,760 --> 00:32:32,240
Speaker 1: and they found tricky ways of posting them. They would

514
00:32:32,320 --> 00:32:34,400
Speaker 1: name them other things in order to try and get

515
00:32:34,440 --> 00:32:39,520
Speaker 1: around any detection. And so eventually Kevin Rose decided he

516
00:32:39,640 --> 00:32:43,280
Speaker 1: was going to side with the community. He said, quote,

517
00:32:43,360 --> 00:32:47,000
Speaker 1: you'd rather see Dig go down fighting than bow down

518
00:32:47,040 --> 00:32:49,600
Speaker 1: to a bigger company. End quote. And he said, if

519
00:32:49,600 --> 00:32:51,480
Speaker 1: that's what you want, that's what we're gonna do. We

520
00:32:51,560 --> 00:32:54,800
Speaker 1: are no longer going to take down those links, and

521
00:32:54,960 --> 00:32:58,560
Speaker 1: so he stopped. He said, We're gonna let them stay

522
00:32:58,600 --> 00:33:01,239
Speaker 1: up on dig because that's what you users want, and

523
00:33:01,320 --> 00:33:04,080
Speaker 1: that's the purpose of dig is to let the users

524
00:33:04,960 --> 00:33:07,240
Speaker 1: generate the stuff that they think is interesting, or at

525
00:33:07,320 --> 00:33:10,520
Speaker 1: least to share the stuff they think is interesting. And

526
00:33:10,600 --> 00:33:14,080
Speaker 1: so he sided with the community on that one. Now,

527
00:33:14,080 --> 00:33:17,440
Speaker 1: as Dig grew, so did its influence. Not only was

528
00:33:17,480 --> 00:33:20,800
Speaker 1: it driving engagement among its users on its own site,

529
00:33:20,960 --> 00:33:24,880
Speaker 1: it also could help drive traffic to other sites. So

530
00:33:24,960 --> 00:33:27,560
Speaker 1: if someone shared, say one of my articles on dig,

531
00:33:27,600 --> 00:33:30,280
Speaker 1: and it made the main page, we would suddenly see

532
00:33:30,320 --> 00:33:33,640
Speaker 1: a huge rush of traffic coming in from dig. And

533
00:33:33,720 --> 00:33:37,520
Speaker 1: that's valuable. You know. You got to remember that most

534
00:33:37,520 --> 00:33:40,680
Speaker 1: of the Internet was generating its revenue through page views

535
00:33:40,760 --> 00:33:43,720
Speaker 1: because the web pages were supported by advertising. So the

536
00:33:43,760 --> 00:33:46,920
Speaker 1: more eyeballs that were on the page, the more money

537
00:33:46,920 --> 00:33:50,440
Speaker 1: you were making. It became a goal for many sites

538
00:33:50,480 --> 00:33:53,719
Speaker 1: to develop content that folks would naturally share on Dig.

539
00:33:54,240 --> 00:33:56,640
Speaker 1: More and more began to incorporate the dig button on

540
00:33:56,760 --> 00:34:01,400
Speaker 1: their pages to encourage this behavior as early as two

541
00:34:01,440 --> 00:34:06,240
Speaker 1: thousand and six. Again, it launched in December two thousand

542
00:34:06,240 --> 00:34:08,040
Speaker 1: and four, but as early as two thousand and six,

543
00:34:08,080 --> 00:34:12,040
Speaker 1: other companies were already showing interest in potentially acquiring Dig.

544
00:34:12,800 --> 00:34:16,320
Speaker 1: Yahoo reportedly wanted to scoop up the company for forty

545
00:34:16,520 --> 00:34:19,920
Speaker 1: million dollars, not bad for a company that started on

546
00:34:20,040 --> 00:34:23,439
Speaker 1: six grand Rose himself was interested in pursuing a deal

547
00:34:23,440 --> 00:34:27,600
Speaker 1: with a totally different company, news Corp. News Corp had

548
00:34:27,760 --> 00:34:31,120
Speaker 1: just purchased MySpace. I did a whole episode about MySpace

549
00:34:31,200 --> 00:34:33,120
Speaker 1: ages ago. If you want to hear about that story,

550
00:34:33,280 --> 00:34:36,640
Speaker 1: it's news Corp's purchase of MySpace is commonly referred to

551
00:34:36,680 --> 00:34:40,880
Speaker 1: as one of the big big mistakes in mergers and

552
00:34:40,920 --> 00:34:44,919
Speaker 1: acquisitions in the tech world. At the time, news Corp

553
00:34:45,000 --> 00:34:48,640
Speaker 1: Was offering sixty million dollars to purchase Dig, and Rose

554
00:34:48,800 --> 00:34:52,319
Speaker 1: wanted to sell. He wanted to take take them up

555
00:34:52,320 --> 00:34:56,200
Speaker 1: on that offer, but he wasn't allowed to because Dig

556
00:34:56,239 --> 00:34:58,600
Speaker 1: had a board of directors and he had to answer

557
00:34:58,680 --> 00:35:01,440
Speaker 1: to this board of directors, and they would not approve

558
00:35:01,640 --> 00:35:04,759
Speaker 1: of a sale to news Corp. They thought that the

559
00:35:04,800 --> 00:35:07,200
Speaker 1: company was worth more than that. They thought Kevin Rose

560
00:35:07,239 --> 00:35:10,480
Speaker 1: was going to drive this company to even greater heights.

561
00:35:11,239 --> 00:35:14,040
Speaker 1: So even though Kevin Rose had created the company, even

562
00:35:14,040 --> 00:35:16,960
Speaker 1: though he had funded the initial company, he didn't have

563
00:35:17,040 --> 00:35:20,840
Speaker 1: the authorization to sell it to another corporation. So he

564
00:35:20,960 --> 00:35:26,160
Speaker 1: was forced to stick with it. He was really upset

565
00:35:26,160 --> 00:35:29,279
Speaker 1: about this, according to several of his friends, and frustrated

566
00:35:29,280 --> 00:35:31,120
Speaker 1: that he couldn't just sell the company that he had

567
00:35:31,160 --> 00:35:34,040
Speaker 1: created and make millions of dollars and then move on

568
00:35:34,200 --> 00:35:38,320
Speaker 1: to do something else. And at this point, Kevin Rose

569
00:35:38,360 --> 00:35:45,200
Speaker 1: owned about sixty percent of dig dot com. The board

570
00:35:45,280 --> 00:35:47,400
Speaker 1: though they wanted to hold out for a bigger fish,

571
00:35:47,480 --> 00:35:50,160
Speaker 1: they wanted to see a better offer, and eventually, a

572
00:35:50,160 --> 00:35:52,799
Speaker 1: couple years later, a bigger fish happened to swim by,

573
00:35:52,880 --> 00:35:56,600
Speaker 1: and that fish's name was Google. In two thousand and eight,

574
00:35:57,239 --> 00:36:01,000
Speaker 1: Google was rumored to consider Dig for a potential acquisition

575
00:36:01,120 --> 00:36:04,080
Speaker 1: for about two hundred million dollars, and this was more

576
00:36:04,120 --> 00:36:07,640
Speaker 1: than just rumor. Kevin Rose talked about it. The deal

577
00:36:07,880 --> 00:36:10,840
Speaker 1: was well on its way, but it fell apart toward

578
00:36:10,880 --> 00:36:15,120
Speaker 1: the end. There were fundamental disagreements that the two sides

579
00:36:15,120 --> 00:36:18,640
Speaker 1: could not see eye to eye on and ultimately Google

580
00:36:18,719 --> 00:36:22,880
Speaker 1: withdrew its intention to acquire Dig. So that was a

581
00:36:22,920 --> 00:36:26,799
Speaker 1: two hundred million dollar deal lost. Kevin Rose was beyond

582
00:36:27,160 --> 00:36:31,800
Speaker 1: frustrated about that. Instead, Dig ended up going up for

583
00:36:31,840 --> 00:36:35,720
Speaker 1: another round of venture capital investment to keep the company afloat,

584
00:36:35,960 --> 00:36:39,759
Speaker 1: because even though it was valuable it wasn't really generating

585
00:36:39,920 --> 00:36:43,280
Speaker 1: that much revenue, so this time they ended up raising

586
00:36:43,320 --> 00:36:48,520
Speaker 1: twenty eight point seven million dollars from Highland Capital Partners. Meanwhile,

587
00:36:48,960 --> 00:36:51,400
Speaker 1: behind the scenes at DIG, Rose was battling against his

588
00:36:51,520 --> 00:36:55,480
Speaker 1: boat board of directors. Rose decided to partner up with

589
00:36:55,560 --> 00:36:58,759
Speaker 1: a designer named Daniel Burka, who was also working for

590
00:36:59,080 --> 00:37:02,200
Speaker 1: DIG at the time, and together they built a file

591
00:37:02,360 --> 00:37:09,920
Speaker 1: sharing application that they called pounce Powncee. That's when the

592
00:37:09,920 --> 00:37:12,920
Speaker 1: board over at DIG said, hey, wait a minute, that

593
00:37:13,040 --> 00:37:16,880
Speaker 1: belongs to us because you work for us and Daniel

594
00:37:16,920 --> 00:37:21,240
Speaker 1: works for us. So you're using DIG assets to build

595
00:37:21,320 --> 00:37:24,520
Speaker 1: a totally different application that should belong to the shareholders

596
00:37:24,560 --> 00:37:29,080
Speaker 1: of DIG. It cannot be its own thing. Meanwhile, morale

597
00:37:29,120 --> 00:37:32,319
Speaker 1: at DIG was on the downslope. People are starting to

598
00:37:32,320 --> 00:37:35,560
Speaker 1: get very discouraged over at DIG. And then the board

599
00:37:35,680 --> 00:37:37,600
Speaker 1: said to Rose, hey, why don't you just knock it

600
00:37:37,640 --> 00:37:40,200
Speaker 1: out with all those other projects you're looking at, pay

601
00:37:40,200 --> 00:37:43,239
Speaker 1: attention to this company that you started. You need to

602
00:37:43,239 --> 00:37:46,240
Speaker 1: make sure you can motivate the people at dig dot com.

603
00:37:46,280 --> 00:37:50,240
Speaker 1: Pour your energy into being innovative in this company. Don't

604
00:37:50,280 --> 00:37:53,919
Speaker 1: just look around for other companies. Now, Kevin Rose didn't

605
00:37:53,960 --> 00:37:57,480
Speaker 1: exactly follow orders. He started working on a Twitter directory

606
00:37:57,520 --> 00:38:01,479
Speaker 1: app called we Follow, which he audationed unveiled it south

607
00:38:01,520 --> 00:38:04,759
Speaker 1: by Southwest. In two thousand and nine, Digg's board went

608
00:38:04,800 --> 00:38:08,000
Speaker 1: to Adelson, who was still CEO at the time, and

609
00:38:08,040 --> 00:38:11,480
Speaker 1: they told Adelson to fire Kevin Rose. So the board

610
00:38:11,520 --> 00:38:14,840
Speaker 1: of directors tells the CEO, you gotta fire this co founder.

611
00:38:15,680 --> 00:38:19,400
Speaker 1: But Rose and Addison had an agreement they could only

612
00:38:20,120 --> 00:38:23,320
Speaker 1: fire each other with the other's consent. In other words,

613
00:38:24,280 --> 00:38:27,080
Speaker 1: they had a veto for any direction that the board

614
00:38:27,080 --> 00:38:29,440
Speaker 1: wanted to take, as long as it was about firing

615
00:38:29,520 --> 00:38:33,840
Speaker 1: one or the other. So instead of firing him, Digg

616
00:38:33,920 --> 00:38:37,719
Speaker 1: decided that, hey, well acquire we Follow. So the Board

617
00:38:37,800 --> 00:38:42,360
Speaker 1: Directors was able to acquire this this venture that Kevin

618
00:38:42,440 --> 00:38:46,040
Speaker 1: Rose had created, and reportedly Kevin Rose earned a few

619
00:38:46,080 --> 00:38:48,719
Speaker 1: million dollars like six million bucks as a result of this.

620
00:38:49,239 --> 00:38:51,719
Speaker 1: But as part of that, in order for him to

621
00:38:51,760 --> 00:38:54,560
Speaker 1: get this money, he had to stick with DIG a

622
00:38:54,960 --> 00:38:59,360
Speaker 1: while longer. Around this time, Kevin Rose started to invest

623
00:38:59,400 --> 00:39:01,640
Speaker 1: in other companies, some of them turned out to be

624
00:39:01,760 --> 00:39:05,480
Speaker 1: huge ones, like Twitter, But as investments were taking his

625
00:39:05,560 --> 00:39:09,719
Speaker 1: attention away from Dig, according to his contemporaries, Kevin Rose

626
00:39:09,719 --> 00:39:12,200
Speaker 1: would sometimes just come in to Dig once a week

627
00:39:12,800 --> 00:39:16,560
Speaker 1: or just disappear for days and days at a time.

628
00:39:16,960 --> 00:39:19,040
Speaker 1: The rest of the time he was working on other projects,

629
00:39:19,080 --> 00:39:22,080
Speaker 1: investing in new companies, and that's really what excited him.

630
00:39:22,120 --> 00:39:24,640
Speaker 1: It turned out that that's what he was interested in,

631
00:39:24,680 --> 00:39:28,800
Speaker 1: the early process, when there's nothing but potential. A company

632
00:39:28,840 --> 00:39:33,320
Speaker 1: hasn't cemented itself, it hasn't turned into its permanent version

633
00:39:33,480 --> 00:39:36,520
Speaker 1: of itself, It could be practically anything. That's when Kevin

634
00:39:36,600 --> 00:39:40,279
Speaker 1: Rose is interested in working with those companies. It gives

635
00:39:40,320 --> 00:39:42,719
Speaker 1: him a lot of energy and creativity. He's not so

636
00:39:42,800 --> 00:39:46,400
Speaker 1: much interested once it establishes itself and managing day to

637
00:39:46,560 --> 00:39:51,759
Speaker 1: day activities is not really his forte. But he did

638
00:39:51,800 --> 00:39:54,640
Speaker 1: help a lot of companies out this way as a

639
00:39:54,719 --> 00:39:58,040
Speaker 1: venture capitalist investor, as an angel investor, if you will.

640
00:39:58,560 --> 00:40:02,160
Speaker 1: But the board of Dig was getting increasingly frustrated with

641
00:40:02,239 --> 00:40:04,640
Speaker 1: Kevin Rose, and meanwhile he was feeling the same way

642
00:40:04,640 --> 00:40:08,399
Speaker 1: about the board of directors. On the site itself, things

643
00:40:08,400 --> 00:40:11,040
Speaker 1: were getting pretty problematic. There were a group of dig

644
00:40:11,160 --> 00:40:14,440
Speaker 1: users who had essentially gained control of what did or

645
00:40:14,480 --> 00:40:17,600
Speaker 1: did not make the main page. In fact, according to

646
00:40:17,640 --> 00:40:21,560
Speaker 1: some sources, the top one hundred users on dig dot

647
00:40:21,600 --> 00:40:26,040
Speaker 1: com were responsible for fifty six percent of the content

648
00:40:26,320 --> 00:40:28,920
Speaker 1: on the front page of Dig. Keep in mind there

649
00:40:28,920 --> 00:40:32,160
Speaker 1: are millions of registered users by this point, and one

650
00:40:32,280 --> 00:40:35,520
Speaker 1: hundred people are in charge of more than half of

651
00:40:35,560 --> 00:40:39,640
Speaker 1: what appears on that main page. Now, they weren't exactly

652
00:40:39,760 --> 00:40:43,120
Speaker 1: gaming the system, but they were definitely using the system

653
00:40:43,120 --> 00:40:47,879
Speaker 1: to their advantage, whether knowingly or not. You see the

654
00:40:47,920 --> 00:40:50,360
Speaker 1: power users the ones who had been using dig the

655
00:40:50,400 --> 00:40:53,799
Speaker 1: most frequently in for the longest. Their votes had a

656
00:40:53,840 --> 00:40:57,600
Speaker 1: heavier weight to them than a new user's vote. So

657
00:40:57,800 --> 00:41:00,320
Speaker 1: if you had been on dig dot com since the

658
00:41:00,360 --> 00:41:03,239
Speaker 1: beginning and you had been using it regularly and you

659
00:41:03,480 --> 00:41:08,040
Speaker 1: voted up on an article, your vote counted way more

660
00:41:08,080 --> 00:41:10,479
Speaker 1: than my vote if I just joined diig dot com

661
00:41:10,480 --> 00:41:13,520
Speaker 1: the other day. And so that's how these top one

662
00:41:13,560 --> 00:41:18,600
Speaker 1: hundred users were essentially dictating what would appear on the

663
00:41:18,600 --> 00:41:21,400
Speaker 1: main page. And again, it wasn't that they were necessarily

664
00:41:21,400 --> 00:41:23,880
Speaker 1: setting out to do that. They were using Dig the

665
00:41:23,920 --> 00:41:27,160
Speaker 1: way they always had. They were up voting stories that

666
00:41:27,200 --> 00:41:29,440
Speaker 1: they thought were interesting, and they were down voting stories

667
00:41:29,480 --> 00:41:32,120
Speaker 1: that they thought were terrible. It just so happened that

668
00:41:32,160 --> 00:41:35,960
Speaker 1: their votes counted more than anybody else's. So sometimes they

669
00:41:36,040 --> 00:41:42,920
Speaker 1: might attempt to boost or drop a story by coordinating

670
00:41:42,920 --> 00:41:45,839
Speaker 1: their efforts, but it was just as possible that they

671
00:41:45,840 --> 00:41:48,320
Speaker 1: were literally using DIG the way it was meant to

672
00:41:48,360 --> 00:41:50,440
Speaker 1: be used. It's just that they had more influence than

673
00:41:50,480 --> 00:41:54,719
Speaker 1: anyone else did. Now Dig's initial solution to this problem

674
00:41:55,200 --> 00:41:57,960
Speaker 1: because the board of directors, the people behind the scenes

675
00:41:57,960 --> 00:42:00,839
Speaker 1: over a DIG, they weren't really keen on the fact

676
00:42:00,880 --> 00:42:03,400
Speaker 1: that a small group of people were having such a

677
00:42:03,480 --> 00:42:06,040
Speaker 1: huge influence on what was actually being shown. It was

678
00:42:06,160 --> 00:42:08,600
Speaker 1: very frustrating for new users. It was making it more

679
00:42:08,600 --> 00:42:13,080
Speaker 1: difficult to attract people to adopt DIG because if you

680
00:42:13,120 --> 00:42:15,239
Speaker 1: come into a system where it feels like it's an

681
00:42:15,239 --> 00:42:18,080
Speaker 1: old boys network and all the old boys are the

682
00:42:18,080 --> 00:42:22,440
Speaker 1: ones who dictate what happens, it feels like nothing you

683
00:42:22,520 --> 00:42:26,359
Speaker 1: do has any consequence. So they wanted to change this up,

684
00:42:26,840 --> 00:42:29,280
Speaker 1: and they decided to try a couple of different methods

685
00:42:29,360 --> 00:42:31,480
Speaker 1: to do it, but it didn't go over so well.

686
00:42:32,560 --> 00:42:34,719
Speaker 1: One of the things they did was installed some controls

687
00:42:34,760 --> 00:42:38,320
Speaker 1: behind the scenes to decrease the group's influence by essentially

688
00:42:38,440 --> 00:42:44,920
Speaker 1: dewaiting their contributions. Part of this meant removing the list

689
00:42:45,040 --> 00:42:48,200
Speaker 1: of top users from the site, which was kind of

690
00:42:48,280 --> 00:42:51,160
Speaker 1: a badge of honor to get your name listed among

691
00:42:51,200 --> 00:42:53,279
Speaker 1: the top users. But then once they got rid of

692
00:42:53,400 --> 00:42:56,799
Speaker 1: top users, these same power users started to feel like

693
00:42:56,800 --> 00:43:01,840
Speaker 1: they were being abandoned or ignored. Many of them felt

694
00:43:01,880 --> 00:43:07,360
Speaker 1: like they were being dismissed. That all the years that

695
00:43:07,400 --> 00:43:10,000
Speaker 1: they had been putting in working with dig, you know,

696
00:43:10,200 --> 00:43:15,040
Speaker 1: using the platform, promoting stories, burying bad stories, that all

697
00:43:15,080 --> 00:43:17,200
Speaker 1: of that was being swept aside, and so they were

698
00:43:17,200 --> 00:43:21,359
Speaker 1: feeling like that they were being punished for this, even

699
00:43:21,400 --> 00:43:23,840
Speaker 1: if they were just using Dig the way they always had.

700
00:43:24,320 --> 00:43:26,960
Speaker 1: And so the company began to alienate some of its

701
00:43:27,560 --> 00:43:30,520
Speaker 1: core user base, and that was a real problem because

702
00:43:30,560 --> 00:43:34,160
Speaker 1: they started to set a new tone. All Right, we're

703
00:43:34,160 --> 00:43:37,120
Speaker 1: getting into the beginning of the end. But before I

704
00:43:37,440 --> 00:43:40,719
Speaker 1: go any further, let's take another quick break to think

705
00:43:40,760 --> 00:43:53,040
Speaker 1: our sponsor. All Right, at this point in its history,

706
00:43:53,160 --> 00:43:58,960
Speaker 1: Dig had forty three million registered users, and Dig had

707
00:43:59,000 --> 00:44:02,120
Speaker 1: started to experiment with generating revenue on its own by

708
00:44:02,320 --> 00:44:07,360
Speaker 1: inserting dig ads into its pages. So between various headlines

709
00:44:07,360 --> 00:44:11,680
Speaker 1: of stories, you would get promoted advertisement. It would just

710
00:44:11,719 --> 00:44:14,600
Speaker 1: appear right there. There's sort of like the promoted search

711
00:44:14,640 --> 00:44:17,040
Speaker 1: results that you would find in Google, and like those,

712
00:44:17,080 --> 00:44:20,400
Speaker 1: the ads were clearly marked as ads. It wasn't like

713
00:44:20,440 --> 00:44:23,080
Speaker 1: they were tricking you into thinking you were reading a story.

714
00:44:23,480 --> 00:44:26,279
Speaker 1: They were marked as ads. And not only that, you

715
00:44:26,320 --> 00:44:29,920
Speaker 1: could actually vote on those ads. You could dig or

716
00:44:30,200 --> 00:44:33,480
Speaker 1: bury ads and gave users a lot of power when

717
00:44:33,520 --> 00:44:36,359
Speaker 1: it came to advertising, something that I think was particularly

718
00:44:37,440 --> 00:44:41,560
Speaker 1: interesting to allow your user base the opportunity to vote

719
00:44:41,600 --> 00:44:47,080
Speaker 1: down ads. It seems like that would be potentially dangerous

720
00:44:47,719 --> 00:44:51,480
Speaker 1: from a revenue standpoint, but it would also send a

721
00:44:51,520 --> 00:44:54,480
Speaker 1: real message about whether or not advertising was working or

722
00:44:54,640 --> 00:44:59,680
Speaker 1: very much not working. Around this time, dig also launched

723
00:44:59,719 --> 00:45:03,840
Speaker 1: app for the blossoming smartphone platforms of iOS and Android.

724
00:45:03,840 --> 00:45:06,480
Speaker 1: Now keep in mind, the iPhone came out in two

725
00:45:06,520 --> 00:45:08,840
Speaker 1: thousand and seven. Android came out in late two thousand

726
00:45:08,840 --> 00:45:11,000
Speaker 1: and seven, early two thousand and eight. This is two

727
00:45:11,040 --> 00:45:13,759
Speaker 1: thousand and nine we're talking about, so all of those

728
00:45:13,800 --> 00:45:16,759
Speaker 1: platforms were still very young, especially when you consider the

729
00:45:16,760 --> 00:45:19,880
Speaker 1: fact that when iOS first launched, you could not develop

730
00:45:20,480 --> 00:45:23,520
Speaker 1: an application for Apple. It was just the Apple apps

731
00:45:23,680 --> 00:45:26,760
Speaker 1: on the original iPhone for a while before they launched

732
00:45:27,239 --> 00:45:30,880
Speaker 1: the ability for other people to program apps for it.

733
00:45:32,239 --> 00:45:35,200
Speaker 1: Things were not going smoothly. Behind the scenes, o Red Dig,

734
00:45:35,440 --> 00:45:38,840
Speaker 1: Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson were having some disagreements about

735
00:45:38,840 --> 00:45:42,799
Speaker 1: the direction of the company, and those disagreements continued to

736
00:45:42,920 --> 00:45:46,080
Speaker 1: escalate throughout two thousand and nine and into twenty ten,

737
00:45:46,239 --> 00:45:51,080
Speaker 1: until Adelson was asked to step down as CEO. More

738
00:45:51,200 --> 00:45:54,719
Speaker 1: or less he was fired. Kevin Rose chose not to

739
00:45:54,880 --> 00:45:58,080
Speaker 1: use his veto option. So remember, Adelson and Rose had

740
00:45:58,080 --> 00:46:04,680
Speaker 1: disagreement where it would require their I guess, I guess

741
00:46:04,760 --> 00:46:08,160
Speaker 1: their agreement with the board of directors before either could

742
00:46:08,160 --> 00:46:12,200
Speaker 1: be fired, and Rose decided not to veno the board's

743
00:46:12,239 --> 00:46:16,120
Speaker 1: decision to fire Adelson. So Ailson resigned. Essentially he was

744
00:46:16,160 --> 00:46:21,640
Speaker 1: able to officially, according to the communication he gave, he

745
00:46:21,760 --> 00:46:25,320
Speaker 1: stepped down from the position, but behind the scenes people

746
00:46:25,400 --> 00:46:28,600
Speaker 1: say that he was essentially fired as CEO. But he

747
00:46:28,600 --> 00:46:30,840
Speaker 1: said he wanted to go and work on more startup ideas,

748
00:46:30,840 --> 00:46:33,280
Speaker 1: and that's exactly what he did. I'll talk more about

749
00:46:33,320 --> 00:46:36,720
Speaker 1: that toward the end, Kevin Rose ended up taking over

750
00:46:37,160 --> 00:46:40,399
Speaker 1: control of the company he founded. He became the new

751
00:46:40,520 --> 00:46:45,439
Speaker 1: CEO of DIG on April fifth, twenty ten. In May

752
00:46:45,520 --> 00:46:49,480
Speaker 1: twenty ten, the company laid off about ten percent of

753
00:46:49,520 --> 00:46:53,200
Speaker 1: its work staff, now, Kevin Rose was still listening to

754
00:46:53,200 --> 00:46:55,640
Speaker 1: the community. One of the things that he listened to

755
00:46:55,880 --> 00:46:59,319
Speaker 1: was their reaction to a tool called the Digbar. The

756
00:46:59,360 --> 00:47:02,759
Speaker 1: company had launched the dig bar earlier, and this was

757
00:47:02,800 --> 00:47:07,319
Speaker 1: a toolbar that would appear above websites, so it would

758
00:47:07,320 --> 00:47:09,919
Speaker 1: install itself so in your browser essentially, so you would

759
00:47:09,960 --> 00:47:12,000
Speaker 1: see this toolbar whenever you would go to other websites.

760
00:47:12,360 --> 00:47:14,560
Speaker 1: And it was meant to let people interact with dig

761
00:47:15,040 --> 00:47:18,480
Speaker 1: without leaving the website they were on. So you could

762
00:47:18,480 --> 00:47:21,640
Speaker 1: go read some other website and use this toolbar to

763
00:47:22,280 --> 00:47:27,400
Speaker 1: leave comments about this particular article on dig, but without

764
00:47:27,640 --> 00:47:31,239
Speaker 1: leaving the website to go to dig first. However, a

765
00:47:31,239 --> 00:47:34,360
Speaker 1: lot of people fell It was really intrusive and irritating

766
00:47:34,360 --> 00:47:38,160
Speaker 1: and distracting. So one of his first actions as CEO,

767
00:47:38,680 --> 00:47:42,840
Speaker 1: Kevin Rose decided to ditch the Digbar. He was responding

768
00:47:42,840 --> 00:47:47,480
Speaker 1: to the community reaction and hopes were running high on

769
00:47:47,560 --> 00:47:50,480
Speaker 1: Kevin Rose, both from the Dig community and the board

770
00:47:50,480 --> 00:47:53,160
Speaker 1: of directors. Everyone was hoping that Kevin Rose was getting

771
00:47:53,239 --> 00:47:57,520
Speaker 1: re energized, reinvested in the company that he had created.

772
00:47:58,600 --> 00:48:01,399
Speaker 1: The board had been really critical of Rose's focus on

773
00:48:01,520 --> 00:48:05,080
Speaker 1: other projects, those other things that he was trying to

774
00:48:05,160 --> 00:48:08,279
Speaker 1: launch while still technically working for dig but they were

775
00:48:08,320 --> 00:48:10,279
Speaker 1: hoping that this meant he was back on board to

776
00:48:10,360 --> 00:48:14,719
Speaker 1: lead the company in a new direction with innovation. So

777
00:48:15,400 --> 00:48:17,399
Speaker 1: the big hope here was that Kevin Rose was now

778
00:48:18,200 --> 00:48:22,400
Speaker 1: grown out of a phase according to the Board of directors,

779
00:48:22,440 --> 00:48:25,319
Speaker 1: that he would no longer just focus on stuff as

780
00:48:25,360 --> 00:48:28,239
Speaker 1: it was brand new and when it interests him, but

781
00:48:28,239 --> 00:48:30,600
Speaker 1: that he would be capable of leading the company in

782
00:48:30,640 --> 00:48:35,440
Speaker 1: the day to day operations of dig dot com. Meanwhile,

783
00:48:35,480 --> 00:48:38,759
Speaker 1: the company began to alpha test the next version of

784
00:48:38,960 --> 00:48:41,680
Speaker 1: dig dot com. This would be version four point zero.

785
00:48:41,920 --> 00:48:44,399
Speaker 1: This is the infamous one. This is the one that

786
00:48:44,680 --> 00:48:48,800
Speaker 1: people totally flipped out over for good reason. I don't

787
00:48:49,040 --> 00:48:57,000
Speaker 1: think that it was unmerited. So before Kevin Rose became CEO,

788
00:48:58,160 --> 00:49:01,360
Speaker 1: dig dot com showed off some of it concepts for

789
00:49:01,480 --> 00:49:05,959
Speaker 1: version four point zero at south By Southwest in twenty ten,

790
00:49:06,840 --> 00:49:09,200
Speaker 1: and a lot of people were really excited by what

791
00:49:09,239 --> 00:49:12,920
Speaker 1: they saw. They thought that the innovations were merited, they

792
00:49:12,920 --> 00:49:15,839
Speaker 1: were good. They felt that it was going to add

793
00:49:15,960 --> 00:49:20,640
Speaker 1: value to the dig dot com experience. But once Kevin

794
00:49:20,760 --> 00:49:24,160
Speaker 1: Rose took over as CEO, he essentially threw all of

795
00:49:24,160 --> 00:49:27,520
Speaker 1: that away and decided to start from scratch. He more

796
00:49:27,640 --> 00:49:30,840
Speaker 1: or less discarded all the changes, all the work that

797
00:49:30,920 --> 00:49:33,080
Speaker 1: had been done for version four point zero, and this

798
00:49:33,160 --> 00:49:35,640
Speaker 1: alienated some of the engineers at dig dot com as

799
00:49:35,680 --> 00:49:39,319
Speaker 1: a result, some of whom left the company because of that.

800
00:49:40,320 --> 00:49:43,600
Speaker 1: And instead he said, let's go in this completely different direction.

801
00:49:43,680 --> 00:49:45,160
Speaker 1: And there are a lot of people who argue about

802
00:49:45,160 --> 00:49:49,040
Speaker 1: why he did this. Some people say he genuinely just

803
00:49:49,080 --> 00:49:52,520
Speaker 1: didn't see the value of the revisions. Some say, well,

804
00:49:52,520 --> 00:49:54,839
Speaker 1: this was an effort for him to distance himself from

805
00:49:54,880 --> 00:49:59,640
Speaker 1: the previous CEO. But whatever the purpose, he decided to

806
00:49:59,680 --> 00:50:02,439
Speaker 1: go totally different direction, and it was one that ended

807
00:50:02,480 --> 00:50:09,759
Speaker 1: up being almost universally unpopular among his community. So one

808
00:50:09,760 --> 00:50:13,880
Speaker 1: of the new features of the Kevin Rose led version

809
00:50:14,200 --> 00:50:18,360
Speaker 1: four point zero of dig dot com allowed news sites

810
00:50:18,440 --> 00:50:24,000
Speaker 1: to submit their own content automatically to dig. I cannot

811
00:50:24,160 --> 00:50:29,840
Speaker 1: stress how this alienated the community at dig dot com,

812
00:50:29,880 --> 00:50:33,400
Speaker 1: because keep in mind, up to this point, the whole

813
00:50:33,480 --> 00:50:37,320
Speaker 1: concept was that users were the ones submitting and voting

814
00:50:37,360 --> 00:50:40,919
Speaker 1: on the content that would show up on dig dot com.

815
00:50:41,320 --> 00:50:43,719
Speaker 1: If you thought a story was interesting, you could submit it.

816
00:50:43,800 --> 00:50:46,040
Speaker 1: If other people thought it was interesting, they could vote

817
00:50:46,040 --> 00:50:48,520
Speaker 1: for it. And that's how it could naturally rise to

818
00:50:48,560 --> 00:50:53,960
Speaker 1: the top. Now with version four point zero, a news site,

819
00:50:54,000 --> 00:50:58,719
Speaker 1: a media company could submit its own stuff directly to

820
00:50:58,840 --> 00:51:04,160
Speaker 1: dig dot com, passing that user experience, essentially turning dig

821
00:51:04,200 --> 00:51:07,480
Speaker 1: dot com into more of a normal news aggregator and

822
00:51:07,560 --> 00:51:11,800
Speaker 1: less of a user generated experience. So it seemed completely

823
00:51:11,800 --> 00:51:17,160
Speaker 1: antithetical to the original philosophy behind dig and as a result,

824
00:51:17,680 --> 00:51:21,480
Speaker 1: community members went by nanas. In fact, a lot of

825
00:51:21,480 --> 00:51:23,040
Speaker 1: people said that this was going to be the death

826
00:51:23,080 --> 00:51:27,200
Speaker 1: blow of dig dot com, and arguably that's what did it.

827
00:51:28,360 --> 00:51:31,040
Speaker 1: So a lot of people decided that they would just

828
00:51:31,280 --> 00:51:35,000
Speaker 1: leave and go and use Reddit instead of dig dot com.

829
00:51:35,040 --> 00:51:38,759
Speaker 1: Reddit was much more similar to what dig had been

830
00:51:38,880 --> 00:51:41,799
Speaker 1: in the past. It also didn't help that revision four

831
00:51:41,840 --> 00:51:45,400
Speaker 1: point zero consolidated a lot of those interests that I

832
00:51:45,440 --> 00:51:48,160
Speaker 1: talked about earlier, you know, things like sports and entertainment

833
00:51:48,160 --> 00:51:51,239
Speaker 1: and lifestyle. It consolidated a lot of those and made

834
00:51:51,239 --> 00:51:55,840
Speaker 1: it more difficult to find specific content in those buckets

835
00:51:56,400 --> 00:51:59,560
Speaker 1: because now they were bigger buckets that contained lots of stuff,

836
00:51:59,600 --> 00:52:08,200
Speaker 1: not just these broken out interests. So they also got

837
00:52:08,280 --> 00:52:11,960
Speaker 1: rid of the bury button, so you couldn't bury stories anymore.

838
00:52:12,000 --> 00:52:16,160
Speaker 1: You couldn't vote down a story, and arguably it was

839
00:52:16,239 --> 00:52:20,520
Speaker 1: to make sure that these users couldn't just end up

840
00:52:20,640 --> 00:52:23,440
Speaker 1: taking control of dig and get rid of anything that

841
00:52:23,880 --> 00:52:27,359
Speaker 1: criticized themselves, for example, but it also meant that there

842
00:52:27,440 --> 00:52:32,320
Speaker 1: was if someone if a news outlet published a story

843
00:52:32,400 --> 00:52:34,480
Speaker 1: directly to dig dot com, there was no way for

844
00:52:34,560 --> 00:52:38,800
Speaker 1: you to express your displeasure to vote that story down.

845
00:52:39,239 --> 00:52:42,640
Speaker 1: The only thing you could really do is not voted up.

846
00:52:43,680 --> 00:52:46,200
Speaker 1: So a lot of people felt that this was taking

847
00:52:46,239 --> 00:52:49,799
Speaker 1: the voice of the community away from the community, and

848
00:52:49,880 --> 00:52:56,640
Speaker 1: this was a community based website. Some people decided that

849
00:52:56,680 --> 00:53:01,080
Speaker 1: they would promote stories from Reddit as a way to

850
00:53:01,400 --> 00:53:05,600
Speaker 1: make a dig at dig, so they would submit links

851
00:53:05,760 --> 00:53:08,680
Speaker 1: from Reddit onto dig dot com. It was kind of

852
00:53:08,719 --> 00:53:12,160
Speaker 1: a method of protest, but more people were just leaving

853
00:53:12,239 --> 00:53:15,440
Speaker 1: dig entirely. They were ditching it and going to Reddit.

854
00:53:15,840 --> 00:53:20,520
Speaker 1: In fact, Alexis o'hanian, one of Reddit's co founders, wrote

855
00:53:20,600 --> 00:53:23,800
Speaker 1: an open letter to Kevin Rose, and he was specifically

856
00:53:23,800 --> 00:53:28,439
Speaker 1: criticizing the fact that they had made these changes. Ohanian said,

857
00:53:29,400 --> 00:53:33,440
Speaker 1: the new version of dig reeks of VC medaling and

858
00:53:33,560 --> 00:53:37,400
Speaker 1: VC stands for a venture capitalist or venture capital. So

859
00:53:37,680 --> 00:53:42,239
Speaker 1: o'hanian was essentially calling Dig a sellout, saying, obviously you're

860
00:53:42,280 --> 00:53:47,040
Speaker 1: taking money from these companies in order to have this relationship,

861
00:53:47,120 --> 00:53:49,879
Speaker 1: and it's at the expense of the community that made

862
00:53:50,160 --> 00:53:55,520
Speaker 1: Dig a valuable asset in the first place. He was saying,

863
00:53:55,640 --> 00:53:59,600
Speaker 1: it's not the links that make dig dot com valuable.

864
00:54:00,040 --> 00:54:02,960
Speaker 1: Links already exist out there on the Internet. What makes

865
00:54:03,040 --> 00:54:09,120
Speaker 1: dig valuable is this user engagement, this community that ends

866
00:54:09,239 --> 00:54:13,719
Speaker 1: up supporting various links. That's where the value is. But

867
00:54:13,760 --> 00:54:19,239
Speaker 1: you're completely undermining that by siding with venture capitals investors.

868
00:54:21,160 --> 00:54:24,600
Speaker 1: After just a few short months, it was clear that

869
00:54:24,719 --> 00:54:27,600
Speaker 1: Kevin Rose's heart was not in running this company and

870
00:54:27,719 --> 00:54:31,120
Speaker 1: leading it in day to day operations. It didn't excite him.

871
00:54:31,600 --> 00:54:35,320
Speaker 1: He found it grueling. He's still very much preferred being

872
00:54:35,360 --> 00:54:38,400
Speaker 1: in on the ground floor as a company is just

873
00:54:38,480 --> 00:54:41,200
Speaker 1: starting to find its way. He still thought that was

874
00:54:41,239 --> 00:54:45,080
Speaker 1: the most interesting aspect of business. He was CEO for

875
00:54:45,200 --> 00:54:50,400
Speaker 1: less than six months. Dig then hired on an Amazon

876
00:54:50,520 --> 00:54:53,760
Speaker 1: executive named Matt Williams to take over the role of CEO,

877
00:54:53,880 --> 00:54:58,680
Speaker 1: and Kevin Rose stepped down in August twenty ten. Rose

878
00:54:58,760 --> 00:55:01,560
Speaker 1: himself began to drift away from the company again. He

879
00:55:01,719 --> 00:55:07,080
Speaker 1: was showing more interest in venture capital investments and other ventures,

880
00:55:07,680 --> 00:55:11,120
Speaker 1: and less interest in the company that he founded. By

881
00:55:11,160 --> 00:55:14,960
Speaker 1: March twenty eleven, he officially resigned from dig dot com.

882
00:55:14,960 --> 00:55:17,240
Speaker 1: He remained on as sort of a consultant to the board,

883
00:55:17,320 --> 00:55:20,600
Speaker 1: but he was no longer an official employee. He also

884
00:55:20,719 --> 00:55:24,520
Speaker 1: launched a company called Milk. This was meant to be

885
00:55:24,560 --> 00:55:28,000
Speaker 1: a startup lab for new applications, So if you wanted

886
00:55:28,000 --> 00:55:31,000
Speaker 1: to develop an app, then Milk was supposed to be

887
00:55:31,000 --> 00:55:35,600
Speaker 1: a place where you could incubate these ideas, and Rose

888
00:55:35,640 --> 00:55:37,640
Speaker 1: thought that this would give him the opportunity to work

889
00:55:37,680 --> 00:55:39,759
Speaker 1: on a lot of different projects just as they were

890
00:55:39,760 --> 00:55:43,320
Speaker 1: starting up, which meant that he would constantly be engaged.

891
00:55:43,640 --> 00:55:45,840
Speaker 1: He would never get bored because there'd always be something

892
00:55:45,840 --> 00:55:48,920
Speaker 1: new to work on. Didn't work out that way. The

893
00:55:49,000 --> 00:55:52,200
Speaker 1: first app out of Milk was an application called oinc,

894
00:55:53,680 --> 00:55:56,360
Speaker 1: as in the noise that a pig makes, and it

895
00:55:56,440 --> 00:55:59,000
Speaker 1: was the only app the company ever produced, and rather

896
00:55:59,040 --> 00:56:02,920
Speaker 1: than continue to deve Oink, Rose chose to shut down

897
00:56:03,000 --> 00:56:07,440
Speaker 1: Milk and he joined Google instead. He took over some

898
00:56:07,600 --> 00:56:10,560
Speaker 1: of the people from Milk and they all joined Google Venture,

899
00:56:10,640 --> 00:56:14,760
Speaker 1: which is kind of their startup and spin off lab.

900
00:56:15,080 --> 00:56:17,640
Speaker 1: He also brought the Dignation show to an end in

901
00:56:17,760 --> 00:56:20,600
Speaker 1: late twenty eleven. He said that they had stopped recording

902
00:56:20,640 --> 00:56:25,040
Speaker 1: the show by October twenty eleven, but that the unpublished

903
00:56:25,080 --> 00:56:30,360
Speaker 1: shows would continue to air or to be published until

904
00:56:30,800 --> 00:56:34,640
Speaker 1: sometime in January twenty twelve. And that's when Dignation came

905
00:56:34,680 --> 00:56:36,560
Speaker 1: to an end. It had a two part finale and

906
00:56:36,600 --> 00:56:40,640
Speaker 1: then it was over. Meanwhile, dig dot com was still

907
00:56:40,680 --> 00:56:46,800
Speaker 1: hemorrhaging users. It didn't last much longer after Kevin Rose resigned. Wow,

908
00:56:46,880 --> 00:56:50,239
Speaker 1: this classic episode's a long one, isn't it. So yeah,

909
00:56:50,280 --> 00:56:53,480
Speaker 1: we still have some information about dig to get through,

910
00:56:53,920 --> 00:56:56,000
Speaker 1: believe it or not. So we're going to take one

911
00:56:56,080 --> 00:57:09,040
Speaker 1: last break and then finish out this classic episode. On

912
00:57:09,160 --> 00:57:14,399
Speaker 1: July twelfth, twenty twelve, Dig was essentially split into three

913
00:57:14,480 --> 00:57:19,360
Speaker 1: different components and sold off to different buyers. The intellectual

914
00:57:19,360 --> 00:57:22,919
Speaker 1: property of dig dot com itself, the website dig dot

915
00:57:22,960 --> 00:57:27,480
Speaker 1: com it went to a company called Beta Works. They

916
00:57:27,520 --> 00:57:32,640
Speaker 1: bought this once incredibly valuable asset for five hundred thousand dollars.

917
00:57:33,040 --> 00:57:35,040
Speaker 1: Keep in mind, this is a company that just a

918
00:57:35,080 --> 00:57:38,240
Speaker 1: few years previous had been valued at two hundred and

919
00:57:38,280 --> 00:57:42,080
Speaker 1: fifty million dollars. And then the site is sold for

920
00:57:42,120 --> 00:57:45,439
Speaker 1: five hundred thousand As for the other assets, they brought

921
00:57:45,440 --> 00:57:48,080
Speaker 1: in more cash, actually than the intellectual property of dig

922
00:57:48,120 --> 00:57:52,120
Speaker 1: dot com itself. Linked In bought several patents that dig

923
00:57:52,160 --> 00:57:56,720
Speaker 1: dot com owned for four million dollars, so the patents

924
00:57:56,720 --> 00:57:59,720
Speaker 1: were worth more than the website was, and The Washington

925
00:57:59,760 --> 00:58:03,680
Speaker 1: Post spent about twelve million dollars bringing on several members

926
00:58:03,760 --> 00:58:09,680
Speaker 1: of Digg's staff to work on its social code project. Now,

927
00:58:09,760 --> 00:58:13,200
Speaker 1: dig dot com still exists today. If you try to

928
00:58:13,280 --> 00:58:16,160
Speaker 1: navigate to dig dot com, you will see a website.

929
00:58:16,200 --> 00:58:18,720
Speaker 1: It is a news aggregator website. It looks very different

930
00:58:18,720 --> 00:58:21,320
Speaker 1: from what it used to be. Now it looks kind

931
00:58:21,360 --> 00:58:25,040
Speaker 1: of more like a standard news aggregate website with images

932
00:58:25,080 --> 00:58:28,520
Speaker 1: and links to various stories across the web. Users can

933
00:58:28,560 --> 00:58:32,880
Speaker 1: still give stories a thumbs up that can promote some

934
00:58:32,920 --> 00:58:35,520
Speaker 1: stories into a more visible position on the web page,

935
00:58:35,640 --> 00:58:38,440
Speaker 1: but there are human editors who moderate what shows up

936
00:58:38,800 --> 00:58:42,160
Speaker 1: on the page itself, and you can't comment on stories anymore,

937
00:58:42,200 --> 00:58:45,400
Speaker 1: at least not right now. According to Beta Works. The

938
00:58:45,440 --> 00:58:49,480
Speaker 1: reason for this is that comments are hard. That's totally true.

939
00:58:49,680 --> 00:58:51,960
Speaker 1: I am not making fun of Beta Works for saying this,

940
00:58:52,080 --> 00:58:55,720
Speaker 1: because it is really a challenge to implement comments in

941
00:58:55,880 --> 00:58:59,960
Speaker 1: a constructive way on your website, particularly in today's world,

942
00:59:00,840 --> 00:59:05,200
Speaker 1: because it can easily be abused, very very easily. Too

943
00:59:05,280 --> 00:59:08,360
Speaker 1: many people take the opportunity to use a comments section

944
00:59:08,960 --> 00:59:12,600
Speaker 1: to cause mischief. And there's not really a big surprise here.

945
00:59:12,640 --> 00:59:16,040
Speaker 1: It takes very little effort to cause a whole lot

946
00:59:16,080 --> 00:59:22,040
Speaker 1: of commotion using comments, So it takes little work to

947
00:59:22,120 --> 00:59:24,520
Speaker 1: make a big impact. If you're someone who likes to

948
00:59:24,560 --> 00:59:27,840
Speaker 1: cause trouble, that is an open door invitation to do so.

949
00:59:28,400 --> 00:59:31,480
Speaker 1: And obviously we've seen this across other places on the web.

950
00:59:31,760 --> 00:59:34,520
Speaker 1: YouTube's a great example. It's not as bad as four chan,

951
00:59:34,880 --> 00:59:39,280
Speaker 1: but it's a great example. So dig still exists, though

952
00:59:39,320 --> 00:59:42,120
Speaker 1: you don't hear as many folks talk about these days.

953
00:59:42,160 --> 00:59:45,600
Speaker 1: But it does get several million visitors each month. According

954
00:59:45,640 --> 00:59:48,000
Speaker 1: to one source, I saw that it got twelve million

955
00:59:48,120 --> 00:59:51,600
Speaker 1: monthly visitors as of January twenty fifteen, so one would

956
00:59:51,600 --> 00:59:56,080
Speaker 1: presume it's probably around that level or higher now. And

957
00:59:56,200 --> 00:59:59,600
Speaker 1: twelve million monthly visitors isn't anything to sneeze at. It's

958
00:59:59,600 --> 01:00:03,120
Speaker 1: a pretty healthy amount of traffic. As for the founders,

959
01:00:03,160 --> 01:00:05,959
Speaker 1: what are they up to now? Well, Jay Adelson worked

960
01:00:06,000 --> 01:00:08,960
Speaker 1: on several different ventures. After he stepped down as CEO.

961
01:00:09,080 --> 01:00:12,920
Speaker 1: He ultimately co founded a company called Center Electric. It's

962
01:00:12,960 --> 01:00:16,120
Speaker 1: a venture capital firm, and so Adelson is still using

963
01:00:16,120 --> 01:00:20,439
Speaker 1: his experience and money to help launch new companies. Ron

964
01:00:20,480 --> 01:00:24,400
Speaker 1: Gordetski stayed with DIG until July twenty ten, which means

965
01:00:24,440 --> 01:00:28,840
Speaker 1: he left during Kevin Rose's tenure as CEO. He went

966
01:00:28,880 --> 01:00:32,160
Speaker 1: on to co found Flick, the review app that I

967
01:00:32,240 --> 01:00:34,800
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier in this episode, and then he transitioned over

968
01:00:34,840 --> 01:00:38,040
Speaker 1: to YouTube. He worked there till February twenty sixteen. He

969
01:00:38,120 --> 01:00:41,560
Speaker 1: then became a digital service expert in the United States

970
01:00:41,720 --> 01:00:44,760
Speaker 1: Digital Service This is a startup company at the White

971
01:00:44,760 --> 01:00:48,080
Speaker 1: House dedicated to using technology to create better tools and

972
01:00:48,120 --> 01:00:52,200
Speaker 1: services for American citizens. No word on how that's going

973
01:00:52,280 --> 01:00:57,000
Speaker 1: right now. Owen Byrne left DIG in two thousand and seven,

974
01:00:57,840 --> 01:01:00,640
Speaker 1: and he worked for several different companies over the following years,

975
01:01:00,680 --> 01:01:04,560
Speaker 1: including Expedia and trip Advisor. And he was mostly building

976
01:01:04,560 --> 01:01:07,280
Speaker 1: out systems for these companies, so he was working on

977
01:01:07,320 --> 01:01:09,560
Speaker 1: the back end. And you know, once you finish that

978
01:01:10,080 --> 01:01:12,160
Speaker 1: then often you might go on to do it at

979
01:01:12,200 --> 01:01:15,040
Speaker 1: a different company. So that's largely what he did. As

980
01:01:15,120 --> 01:01:18,320
Speaker 1: of January twenty seventeen, he started working for Zipcar in

981
01:01:18,360 --> 01:01:22,600
Speaker 1: San Francisco as a software engineer, and Kevin Rose Well.

982
01:01:22,640 --> 01:01:26,080
Speaker 1: He's still an advisor to Google Ventures, which is again

983
01:01:26,160 --> 01:01:29,360
Speaker 1: that division of Google that is all about creating startups

984
01:01:29,360 --> 01:01:32,440
Speaker 1: and spin off companies. He sits on the board of

985
01:01:32,480 --> 01:01:36,280
Speaker 1: a company called hodin Key, which is a wristwatch enthusiast

986
01:01:36,320 --> 01:01:40,880
Speaker 1: website related I assume to the wristwatch manufacturer out in Europe.

987
01:01:41,440 --> 01:01:44,280
Speaker 1: And he's still involved in venture capital. He invests in

988
01:01:44,360 --> 01:01:49,440
Speaker 1: companies early on while they're still malleable. Dig is an

989
01:01:49,440 --> 01:01:52,800
Speaker 1: interesting story, and many of the elements that were pioneered

990
01:01:52,800 --> 01:01:56,800
Speaker 1: at dig found their way into other platforms like Reddit

991
01:01:57,600 --> 01:02:01,560
Speaker 1: or Twitter or Facebook. All of these ways of sharing content,

992
01:02:02,200 --> 01:02:05,840
Speaker 1: many of them originated over at Dig. So we have

993
01:02:05,960 --> 01:02:08,160
Speaker 1: Dig to thank for a lot of the way our

994
01:02:08,200 --> 01:02:12,640
Speaker 1: social networking sites work today. And also it's easy for

995
01:02:12,720 --> 01:02:15,520
Speaker 1: us to see in retrospect how the decisions that were

996
01:02:15,520 --> 01:02:18,640
Speaker 1: made over at dig dot com ultimately were it's undoing,

997
01:02:19,280 --> 01:02:23,440
Speaker 1: particularly and how it seemingly turned its back on the

998
01:02:23,480 --> 01:02:26,200
Speaker 1: community of users that made it so valuable in the

999
01:02:26,240 --> 01:02:28,880
Speaker 1: first place. But at the time it was probably much

1000
01:02:28,920 --> 01:02:30,960
Speaker 1: harder to see that that's what was going to happen.

1001
01:02:31,000 --> 01:02:33,160
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously you wouldn't make those decisions if you

1002
01:02:33,200 --> 01:02:36,240
Speaker 1: knew it was going to lead to the collapse or

1003
01:02:36,240 --> 01:02:40,520
Speaker 1: implosion of a company. Democratization on the Internet is a

1004
01:02:40,520 --> 01:02:43,880
Speaker 1: tricky thing. So if I ever do an episode about Reddit,

1005
01:02:44,240 --> 01:02:47,040
Speaker 1: I'll get into more about the democratization of the Internet.

1006
01:02:47,200 --> 01:02:51,280
Speaker 1: Reddit is not a stranger to controversy. It is structured

1007
01:02:51,400 --> 01:02:53,400
Speaker 1: very much in a way that similar to the early

1008
01:02:53,480 --> 01:02:56,080
Speaker 1: days of dig dot com. But they have been no

1009
01:02:57,120 --> 01:03:02,400
Speaker 1: stranger to behind the scenes drama. There have been plenty

1010
01:03:02,560 --> 01:03:05,760
Speaker 1: of stories about that over for Reddit, so it's not

1011
01:03:05,880 --> 01:03:09,640
Speaker 1: like dig dot com was an example of just bad management.

1012
01:03:10,480 --> 01:03:13,040
Speaker 1: It's a very tricky thing to do when you're letting

1013
01:03:13,080 --> 01:03:17,120
Speaker 1: your users define the experience. Sometimes that does not turn

1014
01:03:17,160 --> 01:03:21,480
Speaker 1: out in a way that's particularly nice. That's it for

1015
01:03:21,760 --> 01:03:24,560
Speaker 1: the Dig story, at least as far as it went

1016
01:03:24,640 --> 01:03:30,280
Speaker 1: in twenty seventeen. Since then, other stuff has happened to Dig.

1017
01:03:30,360 --> 01:03:35,920
Speaker 1: For example, a company called buy sell Ads purchased Dig

1018
01:03:36,080 --> 01:03:41,920
Speaker 1: in twenty eighteen. Don't know how much it paid for that.

1019
01:03:42,800 --> 01:03:46,840
Speaker 1: It has gone through a couple of different iterations since then.

1020
01:03:47,560 --> 01:03:54,480
Speaker 1: Michael O'Connor took over as CEO. In twenty seventeen, it

1021
01:03:54,640 --> 01:03:58,960
Speaker 1: is you know, shut down its dig reader RSS service.

1022
01:03:59,240 --> 01:04:03,280
Speaker 1: So yeah, a lot of stuff has changed set over

1023
01:04:03,320 --> 01:04:05,920
Speaker 1: the years with dig Maybe I do need to do

1024
01:04:06,160 --> 01:04:09,880
Speaker 1: perhaps a short update at some point to talk about

1025
01:04:09,920 --> 01:04:14,080
Speaker 1: how things have changed in more recent years. But I

1026
01:04:14,120 --> 01:04:18,560
Speaker 1: think it's it's pretty safe to say that Digg's influence

1027
01:04:19,440 --> 01:04:24,440
Speaker 1: has been diminished over the last several years. It's not

1028
01:04:24,840 --> 01:04:30,800
Speaker 1: frequently in the conversation the way say Reddit is, but

1029
01:04:31,520 --> 01:04:35,200
Speaker 1: it played a very important role, particularly for things like

1030
01:04:35,320 --> 01:04:39,160
Speaker 1: Discovery back in the earlier days of the web. So

1031
01:04:39,240 --> 01:04:42,560
Speaker 1: it is an important part of the story of the

1032
01:04:42,600 --> 01:04:46,400
Speaker 1: web overall. So I hope you enjoyed this classic episode

1033
01:04:46,760 --> 01:04:56,000
Speaker 1: and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff

1034
01:04:56,080 --> 01:05:00,600
Speaker 1: is an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit

1035
01:05:00,640 --> 01:05:04,200
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to

1036
01:05:04,240 --> 01:05:05,200
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.