WEBVTT - Digging Back Into Digg 0:00:04.440 --> 0:00:12.440 Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there, 0:00:12.440 --> 0:00:15.880 and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. 0:00:15.960 --> 0:00:19.040 I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the 0:00:19.200 --> 0:00:23.720 tech are you? So, just last Friday, we published a 0:00:23.840 --> 0:00:28.480 tech Stuff classic episode called the Dig Story, and I 0:00:28.520 --> 0:00:31.040 was thinking, I should probably do a very quick update 0:00:31.440 --> 0:00:34.960 on what's been going on with Dig since twenty seventeen, 0:00:34.960 --> 0:00:38.200 except you know me, I don't do quick updates because 0:00:38.240 --> 0:00:42.479 I'm a chatty Cathy. So we're gonna do that. We're 0:00:42.479 --> 0:00:44.480 gonna do an update on what's been happening with Dig 0:00:44.520 --> 0:00:47.520 since twenty seventeen. But first I want to go back 0:00:47.560 --> 0:00:50.159 and talk over kind of what happened with Dig in 0:00:50.200 --> 0:00:52.400 the first place, just in case you didn't listen to 0:00:52.400 --> 0:00:55.400 the original episode or the classic that published on Friday, 0:00:55.720 --> 0:00:59.160 so that you're not totally in the dark. So Dig 0:00:59.240 --> 0:01:02.600 originally law lunched in late two thousand and four, and 0:01:02.800 --> 0:01:06.560 it was essentially a news aggregator site. Dig started off 0:01:06.560 --> 0:01:09.360 as a site where users, the visitors, the members of 0:01:09.600 --> 0:01:12.520 DIG would be able to share links to stuff that 0:01:12.560 --> 0:01:16.959 they thought was useful or cool or entertaining or you 0:01:17.000 --> 0:01:19.480 know whatever, and It was a site that was all 0:01:19.520 --> 0:01:24.840 about discovery and sharing discovery. So search engines are great, right, Like, 0:01:24.920 --> 0:01:28.039 if you are looking for something specific, then you can 0:01:28.040 --> 0:01:30.680 go to a search engine and you can find a 0:01:30.840 --> 0:01:35.000 link to something that answers your specific question. That's fantastic. 0:01:35.600 --> 0:01:38.040 But what if you're just in the mood to you know, 0:01:38.600 --> 0:01:42.360 browse and to see what's going on specifically, like what's 0:01:42.560 --> 0:01:46.120 what's more important right now today? What is happening? What 0:01:46.200 --> 0:01:48.840 if you didn't really know what you wanted to see 0:01:48.960 --> 0:01:52.920 or read, you just knew that you wanted something, Then 0:01:53.000 --> 0:01:56.920 a site like dig or Reddit, which launched not long 0:01:56.960 --> 0:02:01.240 after Dig did and was Dig's big competitor, a site 0:02:01.320 --> 0:02:04.120 like that could be a huge help. So Dig really 0:02:04.120 --> 0:02:08.160 focused on the recent and the timely. They really were 0:02:08.280 --> 0:02:13.800 hyper focused on things like tech and gaming and sports 0:02:13.800 --> 0:02:16.120 and news, that kind of stuff like that was really 0:02:16.160 --> 0:02:19.799 where they were focusing. Sharing a link on Dig then 0:02:19.880 --> 0:02:23.360 gave the entire community the opportunity to weigh in on 0:02:23.480 --> 0:02:29.320 whether they thought that particular story was important or not. 0:02:29.960 --> 0:02:33.000 So if folks thought it was interesting or important and 0:02:33.040 --> 0:02:37.080 they had a Dig account, they could boost the story 0:02:37.200 --> 0:02:40.600 up the page ranking. This was called digging, an article, 0:02:40.800 --> 0:02:43.639 and if an article received enough digs, it would get 0:02:43.639 --> 0:02:46.880 promoted to the front page of Dig, which in turn 0:02:46.960 --> 0:02:49.960 was being called the front page of the Internet. If 0:02:50.000 --> 0:02:53.320 the community thought the story was lame or that, you know, 0:02:53.440 --> 0:02:57.840 maybe it was already represented within Dig, whatever that might be, 0:02:58.280 --> 0:03:01.800 you could vote it down. This was called burying an article. 0:03:02.280 --> 0:03:06.400 The philosophy behind Dig was that the community determined what 0:03:06.600 --> 0:03:09.280 stuff on the Internet was actually worth looking at. It 0:03:09.320 --> 0:03:12.959 was giving power to the people. Now, none of that 0:03:13.000 --> 0:03:16.200 would matter unless people actually used Dig. If it had 0:03:16.240 --> 0:03:18.840 never attracted users, then it just would have been a 0:03:18.880 --> 0:03:23.200 curiosity and nothing more. But it actually did attract quite 0:03:23.200 --> 0:03:25.720 a few users. People began to flock to the site 0:03:25.760 --> 0:03:30.320 and use it a lot, so their participation would ultimately 0:03:30.400 --> 0:03:33.359 end up having a larger impact on the web in general. 0:03:33.440 --> 0:03:36.320 Because if you had a piece that showed up on 0:03:36.440 --> 0:03:40.000 Dig's front page, that could mean a significant boost traffic 0:03:40.040 --> 0:03:42.000 as people checked out, you know, they click on the 0:03:42.080 --> 0:03:44.440 article and go to your site. So Dig could end 0:03:44.520 --> 0:03:47.400 up being really influential. There was this thing called the 0:03:47.520 --> 0:03:51.240 Dig effect that was a big deal when Dig was, 0:03:51.280 --> 0:03:54.320 you know, in its heyday, but just a couple of 0:03:54.400 --> 0:03:57.520 years after launching the site, one of the co founders, 0:03:57.640 --> 0:04:02.560 Kevin Rose, who was a personality really at that time. 0:04:02.600 --> 0:04:06.840 He was on tech TV and had a show, a 0:04:06.880 --> 0:04:12.280 podcast that he launched called Dignation The Pretty Famous Dude. 0:04:12.400 --> 0:04:16.280 He started to encounter a frustrating experience because there were 0:04:16.279 --> 0:04:20.320 some companies that were interested in purchasing Dig, and Rose 0:04:20.440 --> 0:04:22.719 was like, yeah, I don't mind the idea of selling 0:04:22.720 --> 0:04:27.159 it because he really liked creating stuff and getting it going. 0:04:27.720 --> 0:04:30.960 But he was less interested in just sticking around forever. Right, 0:04:31.040 --> 0:04:36.400 He liked the creative process. But he couldn't just sell 0:04:36.839 --> 0:04:39.720 Dig and then move on to something else because Dig 0:04:40.080 --> 0:04:44.000 had a board of directors who ultimately had the authority 0:04:44.000 --> 0:04:46.960 of that decision about whether or not to sell a company, 0:04:47.560 --> 0:04:50.960 and the board was convinced that the incoming offers, such 0:04:51.000 --> 0:04:53.720 as one from news Corp. News Corps, which had famously 0:04:53.760 --> 0:04:59.400 purchased MySpace, just undervalued the company. So news Corp's offer 0:04:59.560 --> 0:05:03.000 was said to be somewhere around sixty million dollars, but 0:05:03.040 --> 0:05:05.680 the board director said, no, that's way too low. We 0:05:05.800 --> 0:05:07.840 need to have a much higher offer before we will 0:05:07.920 --> 0:05:12.800 consider selling. So Rose couldn't sell to news Corp. He 0:05:13.000 --> 0:05:15.400 just had to sort of sit back and continue working 0:05:15.440 --> 0:05:19.679 on the site. Reportedly, he became less interested in doing 0:05:19.720 --> 0:05:24.320 that over his time at DIG, so he thought it 0:05:24.320 --> 0:05:26.120 would have been better to cash out and created a 0:05:26.160 --> 0:05:28.920 new project, but he was beholden to the board. By 0:05:28.960 --> 0:05:32.040 two thousand and eight, there was a much larger deal 0:05:32.360 --> 0:05:35.520 that was in the works between Dig and Google. Now, 0:05:35.680 --> 0:05:41.120 the rumor was that Google offered to acquire Dig for 0:05:41.240 --> 0:05:47.160 the princely sum of two hundred million dollars, so it 0:05:47.200 --> 0:05:50.000 looked like maybe the Bard directors had been right right, 0:05:50.080 --> 0:05:52.200 like they had said sixty millions too low, and then 0:05:52.279 --> 0:05:55.839 a couple of years later the offer's two hundred million. However, 0:05:56.440 --> 0:05:59.520 that deal never actually happened. Negotiations fell apart for one 0:05:59.560 --> 0:06:02.440 reason or another, perhaps a whole bunch of different reasons, 0:06:02.800 --> 0:06:05.599 and Google did not go through with the deal. In 0:06:05.680 --> 0:06:10.600 twenty ten, Dig tackled an ambitious and drastic redesign known 0:06:10.640 --> 0:06:16.560 as DIG Version four. Reportedly, Kevin Rose made a huge 0:06:16.640 --> 0:06:22.000 number of changes as part of a venture capital funding round, 0:06:22.600 --> 0:06:27.359 and upon launch, this rollout was a disaster. The redesign 0:06:27.480 --> 0:06:31.400 went from the very foundation of how Dig worked, like 0:06:32.040 --> 0:06:37.400 even the actual technology that powered everything was changed, and 0:06:37.800 --> 0:06:40.960 the changes went all the way through to user interface 0:06:40.960 --> 0:06:44.840 and experience, and it turned out that not only did 0:06:44.839 --> 0:06:46.600 it get rid of a lot of stuff that DIG 0:06:46.680 --> 0:06:50.840 users valued, it was not ready for deployment when it 0:06:50.880 --> 0:06:54.720 went live because people started to encounter frustrating glitches while 0:06:54.720 --> 0:06:57.640 interacting with the new design. The whole website would crash 0:06:57.839 --> 0:07:02.160 repeatedly throughout the day when the site was working, which 0:07:02.200 --> 0:07:04.960 was never a guarantee. Users were very upset to see 0:07:05.080 --> 0:07:10.480 historic features just missing from the experience, so, for example, 0:07:11.040 --> 0:07:15.440 the option to bury a post was gone. Perhaps more 0:07:15.720 --> 0:07:17.880 upsetting was the fact that this new version of dig 0:07:17.920 --> 0:07:21.520 would allow news sites to automatically submit articles to DIG, 0:07:22.040 --> 0:07:26.520 so instead of everything being user generated and user submitted, 0:07:27.160 --> 0:07:31.800 now the news agencies could actually submit stuff themselves directly 0:07:31.840 --> 0:07:34.320 to dig. It no longer was in the community's hands. 0:07:34.920 --> 0:07:37.800 There was also a lot of complaints, although I never 0:07:37.880 --> 0:07:42.200 found like any real strong corroborating evidence, but there were 0:07:42.200 --> 0:07:44.760 a lot of complaints that some power users at DIG 0:07:45.280 --> 0:07:48.440 had a disproportionate amount of control of what could be 0:07:48.560 --> 0:07:51.760 seen and what would not make it to the front page, 0:07:52.320 --> 0:07:54.720 and that meant the community as a whole found itself 0:07:54.800 --> 0:07:58.640 unable to really get stuff seen on the main page, 0:07:58.640 --> 0:08:03.440 so it was very disheartening. Alexis Ohanian, one of the 0:08:03.480 --> 0:08:07.160 co founders of Reddit, you know, the big competitor to Dig, 0:08:07.280 --> 0:08:11.000 actually published an open letter to Kevin Rose saying that 0:08:11.040 --> 0:08:13.640 the new features in version four suggested that the team 0:08:13.680 --> 0:08:16.560 had allowed investors to really weigh in on what should 0:08:16.600 --> 0:08:18.640 and should not be part of the platform, and that 0:08:18.800 --> 0:08:22.600 rather than listening to the community and responding to what 0:08:22.640 --> 0:08:25.560 the community wanted, the site was listening to the money, 0:08:25.960 --> 0:08:29.680 and that that in turn was alienating Dig's users. And 0:08:29.720 --> 0:08:32.160 it turns out that, you know, a lot of what 0:08:32.200 --> 0:08:34.120 he was saying was right, because a ton of Dig 0:08:34.200 --> 0:08:39.040 users abandoned Dig. Many of them actually migrated on over 0:08:39.080 --> 0:08:43.080 to Reddit. But that's another story, because Reddit itself has 0:08:43.120 --> 0:08:47.000 had its own ups and downs, including a very tumultuous 0:08:47.040 --> 0:08:50.280 twenty twenty three. Anyway, the various co founders of Dig 0:08:50.960 --> 0:08:54.559 started to leave the company over time. By twenty eleven, 0:08:54.640 --> 0:08:58.040 Kevin Rose was bouncing from the company as well. Lots 0:08:58.080 --> 0:09:04.559 of users had Traffic was dr being precipitously. It was bad. Meanwhile, 0:09:04.640 --> 0:09:08.040 social platforms like Facebook and Twitter were also growing rapidly 0:09:08.160 --> 0:09:10.679 and taking over some of the functions that Dig had 0:09:10.720 --> 0:09:14.440 performed because now folks could create a profile on a 0:09:14.480 --> 0:09:20.920 system that prioritized communities and networks, at least that's what 0:09:20.960 --> 0:09:23.800 they claimed to do. Then they could share stuff with 0:09:23.840 --> 0:09:27.920 their friends on these platforms, So it was social first 0:09:28.360 --> 0:09:31.920 and then content second. Kind of approach you could argue 0:09:31.960 --> 0:09:37.559 Dig was maybe you know, content and social together, or 0:09:37.720 --> 0:09:41.440 maybe even content first, social second. But the point is 0:09:41.520 --> 0:09:46.000 Dig was seeing other sites drink its milkshake. On top 0:09:46.040 --> 0:09:49.360 of all that, other companies were poaching talent from Dig. 0:09:49.720 --> 0:09:52.520 The Washington Post company hired more than a dozen of 0:09:52.559 --> 0:09:55.920 digs site engineers, for example, so it was pretty clear 0:09:56.000 --> 0:09:59.640 Dig was on borrow time. In twenty twelve, Dig would 0:09:59.720 --> 0:10:02.360 kind of of get sold for parts. Different parts of 0:10:02.400 --> 0:10:06.040 Dig were sold off to other companies, but the site 0:10:06.080 --> 0:10:10.240 itself and the underlying tech and the ip of what 0:10:10.360 --> 0:10:13.480 made dig dig ended up going to a company called 0:10:13.520 --> 0:10:18.040 Beta Works, and the price tag had dropped from that 0:10:18.120 --> 0:10:21.680 theoretical high of two hundred million dollars with Google to 0:10:21.840 --> 0:10:25.680 a much less grandiose half million. Don't get me wrong, 0:10:25.720 --> 0:10:28.600 half a million dollars is a lot of money, It 0:10:28.720 --> 0:10:32.160 just doesn't measure up to some of the earlier offers. 0:10:32.240 --> 0:10:36.360 DIG had turned away in its history. I should also 0:10:36.400 --> 0:10:39.960 add there's some dispute about that five hundred thousand dollars 0:10:40.320 --> 0:10:44.760 sales price. That's what everyone reported, just about everyone anyway, 0:10:45.440 --> 0:10:50.000 but tech crunches Frederick Lardinois reported that the actual deal 0:10:50.120 --> 0:10:53.560 was considerably larger and included not just cash but also 0:10:53.720 --> 0:10:56.920 equity in the company, and so the value was much 0:10:57.000 --> 0:11:00.720 higher than what reports had suggested. In that same article, 0:11:00.760 --> 0:11:05.000 he pointed out that Dig's annual ad revenue was likely 0:11:05.040 --> 0:11:07.800 more than half a million dollars a year, so it 0:11:07.800 --> 0:11:10.079 wouldn't really make sense to sell the company for half 0:11:10.080 --> 0:11:14.319 a million dollars. But then again, Vox dot com reported 0:11:14.360 --> 0:11:17.560 that Dig ran its entire service off of servers that 0:11:17.600 --> 0:11:20.800 were on premises. You know, it wasn't a cloud based 0:11:21.280 --> 0:11:24.320 company at that point, so it was really before cloud 0:11:24.320 --> 0:11:28.640 competing had made it less expensive to run huge websites. Like, 0:11:28.880 --> 0:11:32.439 if your website had a fairly modest user base, then 0:11:33.040 --> 0:11:36.720 you probably wouldn't be seeing enormous bills per month. But 0:11:36.840 --> 0:11:40.600 for Dig, because of how popular it was, Vox estimated 0:11:40.640 --> 0:11:43.160 that it would cost a quarter million dollars a month 0:11:43.320 --> 0:11:46.160 just to keep the site running. So then you're like, well, 0:11:46.800 --> 0:11:49.720 even if your your revenue is more than half a 0:11:49.760 --> 0:11:52.959 million dollars, If your monthly costs are two hundred and 0:11:52.960 --> 0:11:57.559 fifty thousand dollars, you're in trouble unless you're making significantly 0:11:57.640 --> 0:12:00.520 more than half a million dollars a year. But whatever 0:12:00.559 --> 0:12:02.840 the scope of the deal, however much it ended up 0:12:02.880 --> 0:12:06.080 being under Beta Works, DIG would relaunch in the summer 0:12:06.080 --> 0:12:10.760 of twenty twelve with an entirely different approach to content. 0:12:11.120 --> 0:12:14.240 So instead of having users determine what material would make 0:12:14.320 --> 0:12:19.720 up the front page, DIG featured an editorially curated front page. So, 0:12:19.760 --> 0:12:24.720 in other words, DIG determined what went on Dig, not 0:12:24.960 --> 0:12:27.680 users that were still like scoring systems in place and 0:12:27.720 --> 0:12:30.400 that kind of stuff, but the fundamental operation of DIG 0:12:30.840 --> 0:12:34.320 had totally transformed. Now that's pretty much where I left 0:12:34.360 --> 0:12:38.640 off in that twenty seventeen episode. At that time, DIG 0:12:38.720 --> 0:12:41.360 was still under the ownership of Beta Works, the company. 0:12:41.400 --> 0:12:44.880 Beta Works typically focuses on startups that are at the 0:12:44.960 --> 0:12:47.800 earliest stages of development. So Beta Works looks out for 0:12:47.880 --> 0:12:52.800 interesting projects and then provides what's called seed stage funding, 0:12:53.080 --> 0:12:56.360 which is the initial money that a startup needs in 0:12:56.440 --> 0:12:59.920 order to kind of coalesce from an idea into something real. 0:13:00.400 --> 0:13:03.120 Seed money helped startups do things like attract the right 0:13:03.160 --> 0:13:06.360 talent and put together the earliest plans for how the 0:13:06.400 --> 0:13:10.360 company will actually operate. To take over Dig was a 0:13:10.360 --> 0:13:13.640 little bit outside the wheelhouse for that kind of company, though, 0:13:13.679 --> 0:13:16.679 as I understand it, Beta Works mary Dig with a 0:13:16.760 --> 0:13:20.080 socially driven news web app it had in development called 0:13:20.200 --> 0:13:23.560 news dot Me. One thing Beta Works did have under 0:13:23.559 --> 0:13:26.280 its belt was the service bit dot l y, the 0:13:26.640 --> 0:13:31.760 URL shortener. That's another episode. It also helped develop tweet Deck, 0:13:31.800 --> 0:13:34.840 which Twitter would ultimately purchase, but again that's a matter 0:13:34.920 --> 0:13:39.160 for another episode. The heyday of Dig was over at 0:13:39.160 --> 0:13:41.880 this point, and finding news articles and stuff from the 0:13:41.920 --> 0:13:45.200 Beta Works era of Dig isn't that easy because people 0:13:45.240 --> 0:13:48.920 had moved on. Reddit absorbed a ton of digs community, 0:13:49.400 --> 0:13:51.880 and the new Dig was largely viewed as just another 0:13:52.320 --> 0:13:57.600 web based news site. So really, in that stretch between 0:13:57.640 --> 0:14:02.800 twenty twelve and two eighteen, there aren't that many news 0:14:02.840 --> 0:14:07.320 items about Dig. But then things would change. I'll explain 0:14:07.360 --> 0:14:20.520 more after we take this quick break. Okay, So, like 0:14:20.560 --> 0:14:24.280 I said before the break, between twenty twelve and twenty eighteen, 0:14:24.800 --> 0:14:27.920 you didn't see that many news stories about Dig. It 0:14:28.120 --> 0:14:32.800 just seemed to be performing like a basic web page 0:14:32.840 --> 0:14:37.040 that had news items on it, most of which were 0:14:37.560 --> 0:14:42.920 either written by an internal editorial team or were connecting 0:14:42.960 --> 0:14:46.920 to external news sources. So the next big bit of 0:14:47.040 --> 0:14:49.800 Dig's history that I have to share happened. In early 0:14:49.880 --> 0:14:53.800 spring twenty eighteen, Dig announced that it was shutting down 0:14:54.000 --> 0:14:57.360 it's OURSS reader tool. So for those of y'all who 0:14:57.360 --> 0:15:01.840 are not familiar with RSS, it stayed for really Simple Syndication, 0:15:02.880 --> 0:15:07.400 or maybe it stands for RDF Site Summary. RDF in 0:15:07.440 --> 0:15:12.440 turn stands for Resource Description Framework. There's actually disagreement on 0:15:12.480 --> 0:15:15.720 what RSS stands for, but really the initialism doesn't matter. 0:15:16.520 --> 0:15:22.120 RSS allows for the distribution of web updates or Internet 0:15:22.440 --> 0:15:26.680 content in general to lots of other stuff. So what 0:15:26.720 --> 0:15:30.520 does that actually mean? Well, let's take an example with podcasts. 0:15:31.600 --> 0:15:35.160 How does your podcast app, whichever one you use, how 0:15:35.200 --> 0:15:38.480 does it know when there is a new episode of 0:15:38.840 --> 0:15:42.640 the shows that you subscribe to. Well, podcasts published to 0:15:42.680 --> 0:15:47.080 a platform, and each podcast has an RSS feed associated 0:15:47.120 --> 0:15:51.000 with it, your podcatching service checks for updates to the 0:15:51.080 --> 0:15:54.520 various RSS feeds out there all the shows that you 0:15:54.560 --> 0:15:58.000 subscribe to. So let's say that you subscribe to tech stuff, 0:15:58.040 --> 0:15:59.960 it does a check to see is there a new 0:16:00.240 --> 0:16:03.320 tech stuff episode? If there has not been an update 0:16:03.360 --> 0:16:07.720 since the last time it did this check, nothing changes you, 0:16:07.840 --> 0:16:11.880 no notifications, nothing like that. If when it checks the 0:16:12.040 --> 0:16:16.040 RSS link and it finds an update, finds out there's 0:16:16.040 --> 0:16:20.280 been a new episode added to the feed, your podcasting 0:16:20.280 --> 0:16:22.320 app will say, Hey, there's a brand new episode of 0:16:22.400 --> 0:16:24.960 that show you like, so you can listen to it 0:16:25.000 --> 0:16:29.720 whenever you like. RSS tech led to the development of 0:16:29.920 --> 0:16:34.480 RSS readers, So these tools let you subscribe to various 0:16:34.520 --> 0:16:38.680 sources and you can view updates to those websites within 0:16:38.840 --> 0:16:44.560 the reader itself. So instead of physically navigating to like 0:16:44.680 --> 0:16:47.880 a dozen different websites that you like in order to 0:16:47.920 --> 0:16:50.440 just see if anything's new. Let's say that you know 0:16:50.520 --> 0:16:54.360 you typically visit four different news sites, a couple of 0:16:54.360 --> 0:16:59.680 gaming sites. Maybe you visit I don't know, let's say 0:17:00.120 --> 0:17:03.920 it's a financial site and you do all these and 0:17:03.960 --> 0:17:06.159 those are typically the ones you go to. Instead of 0:17:06.160 --> 0:17:08.280 going to each of those individually and looking to see 0:17:08.280 --> 0:17:11.119 if there are any updates, you could use an RSS 0:17:11.119 --> 0:17:14.560 reader that would just list out in chronological order reverse 0:17:14.640 --> 0:17:18.760 chronological order, typically what the latest headlines are from the 0:17:18.840 --> 0:17:21.880 various sources, and they would usually let you organize these 0:17:21.920 --> 0:17:24.359 in various ways, so you could put all of your 0:17:24.640 --> 0:17:27.320 sports relaid stuff in one place, you know, all of 0:17:27.320 --> 0:17:30.280 your gaming stuff in another place, et cetera, and you 0:17:30.320 --> 0:17:33.280 could just go through and look for headlines that caught 0:17:33.359 --> 0:17:35.400 your interest. And you don't have to go to each 0:17:35.440 --> 0:17:38.879 website individually just to see what the updates are. You 0:17:38.880 --> 0:17:42.520 consolidate everything into a single view. It's incredibly useful. But 0:17:42.680 --> 0:17:46.000 by twenty eighteen, the glory of the RSS reader days 0:17:46.680 --> 0:17:49.240 was well in the past. A lot of companies that 0:17:49.359 --> 0:17:53.200 had previously offered RSS readers had since shut them down. 0:17:54.080 --> 0:17:58.919 For instance, Google shut down Google Reader way back in 0:17:58.960 --> 0:18:03.199 twenty thirty. There are still folks out there today, a 0:18:03.320 --> 0:18:07.680 decade later who are sore about that. I'm one of them. Honestly, 0:18:07.960 --> 0:18:12.480 RSS readers really made it useful to get a quick 0:18:12.520 --> 0:18:14.600 look at news, and there still are some out there. 0:18:14.640 --> 0:18:16.720 I don't want to say that they don't exist anymore, 0:18:17.400 --> 0:18:22.400 but some of the biggest ones have long since gone away. Anyway, 0:18:22.480 --> 0:18:25.479 Dig had maintained its own RSS reader tool, and it 0:18:25.520 --> 0:18:30.240 was fittingly enough called dig Reader, but in March twenty eighteen, 0:18:30.840 --> 0:18:35.119 Dig announced that the feature would end on March twenty sixth. 0:18:36.040 --> 0:18:40.719 Molly Mchughotharinger dot com posted a full article about this 0:18:41.200 --> 0:18:43.600 and lamented the fact that it was the latest in 0:18:43.680 --> 0:18:46.960 a long string of setbacks for people who just wanted 0:18:47.000 --> 0:18:51.960 to be able to view web updates chronologically or reverse chronologically. 0:18:52.520 --> 0:18:55.480 MCEU pointed out that a lot of platforms were leaning 0:18:55.560 --> 0:18:59.520 harder and harder on algorithms to determine what a user 0:18:59.520 --> 0:19:04.280 would actually see, and that these algorithms valued engagement and 0:19:04.400 --> 0:19:09.320 sharing over quality. This internment, we were getting a lot 0:19:09.359 --> 0:19:13.480 more junk, fake stuff, and misinformation put in front of us, 0:19:13.760 --> 0:19:18.040 things that would grab our attention but not necessarily reflect reality. 0:19:18.920 --> 0:19:23.200 That probably sounds familiar, right because we we've been talking 0:19:23.200 --> 0:19:26.720 about that for a couple of years a lot, But 0:19:26.800 --> 0:19:29.479 this was way back in twenty eighteen. It just hasn't 0:19:29.520 --> 0:19:34.800 gotten any better. MCEW expressed sadness that yet another RSS 0:19:34.840 --> 0:19:37.280 reader was going the way of the DODO, because it 0:19:37.320 --> 0:19:40.919 marked another example of how it was growing increasingly hard 0:19:41.480 --> 0:19:46.440 for an individual to curate their own web experience. Instead, 0:19:47.359 --> 0:19:52.400 the various platforms out there, particularly social networks, were taking 0:19:52.640 --> 0:19:57.800 over that task for us and dictating to us what 0:19:57.880 --> 0:20:00.199 we would see as opposed to letting us say, Hey, 0:20:00.280 --> 0:20:04.640 I'm really just interested in reading information from these sources 0:20:04.680 --> 0:20:07.560 because I feel those sources are really reliable, so I 0:20:07.640 --> 0:20:12.840 just want to see those Those options were going away anyway. 0:20:13.040 --> 0:20:16.760 Just one month later after they shut down dig Reader, 0:20:16.880 --> 0:20:21.439 even bigger news came out of dig. Beta Works sold 0:20:21.480 --> 0:20:25.760 off a majority steak in DIG to another company called 0:20:26.040 --> 0:20:30.080 buy sell Ads. It would not be a total acquisition. 0:20:30.160 --> 0:20:35.560 Beta Works CEO John Borthwick indicated that Dig's previous shareholders, 0:20:35.560 --> 0:20:41.480 including Beta Works itself, would retain some steak in DIG. 0:20:42.119 --> 0:20:45.199 The actual details of the deal remained private. So to 0:20:45.280 --> 0:20:48.960 this day, I have no clue how much buy sell 0:20:49.080 --> 0:20:52.359 Ads spent in order to get a majority steak. I 0:20:52.359 --> 0:20:57.120 don't even know what level that majority steak is, right, 0:20:57.160 --> 0:21:01.720 I don't know what percentage of dig i sell ads owns, 0:21:03.119 --> 0:21:07.360 but what the heck is buy sell Ads. That all 0:21:07.400 --> 0:21:11.359 started with a guy named Todd Garland. He got his 0:21:11.440 --> 0:21:14.840 start as a web designer, and he found that the 0:21:14.840 --> 0:21:19.720 part he liked the least about creating web pages or 0:21:19.800 --> 0:21:24.200 administering web pages was the whole process of securing ads 0:21:24.720 --> 0:21:28.040 for web pages to help generate revenue. He found that 0:21:28.320 --> 0:21:33.520 entire process to be slow and frustrating and overly complicated, 0:21:34.040 --> 0:21:38.199 and he thought, what if you could build some software 0:21:38.600 --> 0:21:42.240 to automate as much of that process as you possibly can, 0:21:42.880 --> 0:21:46.240 to make it faster and simpler for the end users. 0:21:46.560 --> 0:21:49.240 What if you could remove all those hurdles that typically 0:21:49.280 --> 0:21:54.000 exist and through software, just make it a much less 0:21:54.000 --> 0:21:59.320 painful experience. To that end, he built buy sell ads 0:21:59.600 --> 0:22:03.960 so that from say a web page standpoint, a publisher standpoint, 0:22:04.640 --> 0:22:07.680 a web admin wouldn't have to do anything other than 0:22:07.760 --> 0:22:10.520 perhaps set a rate, you know, say like, all right, 0:22:10.920 --> 0:22:14.680 this is how much I will charge an advertiser to 0:22:15.200 --> 0:22:17.520 make use of the real estate on my web page. 0:22:18.160 --> 0:22:21.840 And then that person would just wait to see which 0:22:21.880 --> 0:22:25.959 ad requests get sent to them through this service and 0:22:26.000 --> 0:22:28.720 then approve or deny from there, and that would get 0:22:28.760 --> 0:22:32.199 things going. On the advertiser side. All they had to 0:22:32.200 --> 0:22:36.000 do was determine if the ad rate made sense, Like 0:22:36.000 --> 0:22:38.480 if they said, well, does it make sense for us 0:22:38.520 --> 0:22:40.080 to pay this much? Are we going to get enough 0:22:40.119 --> 0:22:44.600 traffic for that to be a good investment? And if so, 0:22:44.960 --> 0:22:47.600 then they could say, all right, well we will. We're 0:22:47.640 --> 0:22:52.120 interested in including this particular publisher as part of our 0:22:52.160 --> 0:22:56.040 ad campaign, and that would be it. At least that 0:22:56.160 --> 0:23:01.199 was the idea. I'll come back to buy sell ads 0:23:01.240 --> 0:23:05.480 because the reputation of that company is a little up 0:23:05.560 --> 0:23:08.560 in the air as far as I can tell, although 0:23:09.240 --> 0:23:13.920 from extremely limited information, so keep all that in mind. 0:23:14.840 --> 0:23:17.040 At any rate, Buy sell ads seemed like it was 0:23:17.080 --> 0:23:20.520 an odd fit to purchase a majority share in an 0:23:20.560 --> 0:23:24.600 online media company, But then you could also argue that 0:23:24.720 --> 0:23:27.480 Beta Works was a weird fit, and Beta Works had 0:23:27.520 --> 0:23:31.439 done it way back in twenty twelve. However, when you 0:23:31.520 --> 0:23:34.680 really start to think about it, I argue the buy 0:23:34.720 --> 0:23:38.479 sell ads acquisition makes a little more sense because an 0:23:38.560 --> 0:23:42.560 ad company does serve two sets of customers. Right. You've 0:23:42.600 --> 0:23:45.280 got your advertisers, who want to get ads in front 0:23:45.320 --> 0:23:48.560 of people, preferably people who are more likely going to 0:23:48.640 --> 0:23:53.000 act on the ad than otherwise. And then you've got 0:23:53.000 --> 0:23:57.760 your publishers, the people who have real estate to offer 0:23:58.160 --> 0:24:00.280 that they want to monetize on their sites or to 0:24:00.320 --> 0:24:03.399 generate revenue. A company like buy sell ads has to 0:24:03.440 --> 0:24:06.399 satisfy both groups, right. They have to satisfy both the 0:24:06.400 --> 0:24:11.399 advertisers and the publishers, and by gaining majority ownership of 0:24:11.680 --> 0:24:14.719 a publisher, because that's what dig is at this point. 0:24:14.840 --> 0:24:19.800 It's a publisher. It's not an aggregator anymore, not really. Well, 0:24:19.800 --> 0:24:23.359 that means that buy sell ads now has a platform 0:24:23.560 --> 0:24:27.159 where it can actively test out new strategies. It can 0:24:27.240 --> 0:24:30.640 deploy new approaches to matching ads to content. It can 0:24:30.720 --> 0:24:33.280 look and see which of these are working well and 0:24:33.320 --> 0:24:36.359 which ones don't like, which ones are generating more click 0:24:36.440 --> 0:24:41.639 through which ones are not, and using that as like 0:24:41.680 --> 0:24:46.480 a testing ground, it can then perhaps deploy strategies across 0:24:46.920 --> 0:24:51.640 larger groups of customers. In addition to that, it also 0:24:51.960 --> 0:24:54.600 this is something that Todd Garland has actually said, Buy 0:24:54.680 --> 0:24:59.280 sell ads can try and design a publication platform strategy 0:24:59.400 --> 0:25:06.720 that in theory maximizes the publisher's ability to monetize their site. 0:25:06.800 --> 0:25:09.920 And then once they have figured out that strategy, they 0:25:09.920 --> 0:25:13.879 can then license that to other publishers. So, in other words, 0:25:13.920 --> 0:25:18.479 they come up with a process that other publishers can follow, 0:25:18.600 --> 0:25:20.960 and by paying buy sell ads, they'll say, here's how 0:25:20.960 --> 0:25:23.160 you do it, and just work with us, and we'll 0:25:23.160 --> 0:25:25.720 make sure that we match you with advertisers that are 0:25:25.720 --> 0:25:28.800 going to make the best use of your platform, and 0:25:28.840 --> 0:25:32.199 everyone's happy. The advertisers get their ads acted on by 0:25:32.200 --> 0:25:35.800 a larger audience, you get a bigger payout because of 0:25:35.920 --> 0:25:41.040 the ad revenue coming in, and we all get rich. However, 0:25:41.160 --> 0:25:46.159 buy sell ads. Purchasing dig made some folks feel anxious 0:25:46.240 --> 0:25:48.560