Like everyone else, Digg has a serious case of Twitter envy. And they’re doing something about it.
In an interview last month Digg founder Kevin Rose told me that the company was working on an overhaul of the Digg service, calling it a “completely new direction” and referring to the new Digg search as an indication of what direction they’re going in. He didn’t (and still won’t) give many details, except to say that Digg needs to to “a living and breathing site” and “a little bit more real-time in nature” (”real-time” is secret code for Twitter, and has been used so much lately that people are mocking it).
Earlier in the interview Rose talked about wanting more user participation on the site, with top stories getting 50,000 or more votes (most top stories get a few thousand now). The new product is designed to encourage more user engagement.
We’ve taken the relevant clips from the original interview below. Whatever it is, it’s coming sometime soon.
Clip Transcript:
Rose: What we’re working on now is what I would consider to be the biggest overhaul to how everything works behind the scenes, and that’s no joke. Like we…
Arrington: Front end and back end rewrite?
Rose: Completely new directions for us that you will look at and I guarantee you would be like that’s a ballsy move. Like it’s really, we’re evolving and we’ve got some really exciting things that we believe are going to take us to that turn.
Arrington: What’s the timing? Is that this year?
Rose: I mean, I’m not going to give out hard dates, but it’s some time in the next six months.
Arrington: What might that look like? Like, what are we talking about?
Rose: Well, we’re talking about a revamp of the site.
Arrington: Like a logo change?
Rose: Yeah, a logo change is going to get us there. We’re talking about some lens flares on the logo…
Arrington: Well, what are you going to do so that somebody’s going to, like, “Hey, here’s the stories.” And they’re saying, “Digg it!” I mean that’s kind of it. Right? It’s like a one trick pony with bells and whistles attached. I mean, I agree that most of your changes are bells and whistles. So, what is it that you’re going to do that doesn’t kill your core idea that’s a whole new thing?
Rose: I can’t go into that stuff right now.
[later in interview...]
Rose: I will say this. I don’t want to get into specific details about the product, but I believe that it’s time for Digg to get a little bit more real-time in nature. And we need to be a living and breathing site. And you know, that’s an exciting direction for us. I think that’s part of the reason why we rolled out a pretty awesome search. It was kind of us experimenting with some of that.
Kevin Rose must be living the dream. Lucky bastard…
No kidding, must be a dream to run a company that is in the red and struggling to see the light at the end of tunnel, not to mention slowly losing relevance to Twitter.
I used to check Digg everyday. Now once a week.
Digg is a really cool site. You can receive Digg’s updates by following http://www.twib...o.com/Digg_2000
James
http://www.twibeo.com
the multimedia twitter
The only new thing Rose’s probably going to take is marrying Digg’s with Twitter’s functions.
He seems to have the golden touch.
Pownce?
Pwned!
Heck, even Kevin used Twitter more than Pownce!
I loved Pownce though, and it did get acquired, so technically he does have the golden thouch
Internets people are stupid
Maybe re-working some of the digg labs stuff into a more dynamic homepage would do the trick.
I have no idea what this story is about. The site is going to be different and better in 6 months?
Is this like that time that guy invented a new form of transportation, and cities of the future will be designed around it, and it blew the minds of mall cops everywhere?
da ship has sailed and digg etc are losing relevance fast; big trouble for them
Digg meets Bloomberg ticker tape… I can only imagine what this will do in terms of traffic effects.
The bigger concern will be if any changes affect the user base and cause upheaval. The autocracy vs. community seems to be one of the conflicts that prevents sweeping feature roll out from being pushed without a subsequent push back from the users.
Do any sites like Facebook, Twitter, Digg, etc… have any more control over what they can do without alienating a significant portion of the base?
What we need is more people dividing their attention among more disparate thoughts and being less focused and creative in their unique fields.
How can digg distinguish ‘Real Time’ infomation. It’s a real challenge for digg.
I’ll only address Digg’s search. It will be near real-time soon, simply because Digg uses Solr, and Solr uses Lucene, and Lucene is likely to get near real-time search in version 3.0 or even 2.9.
For what it’s worth, there is a case study that addresses real-time search in the upcoming Lucene in action 2: http://www.mann...g.com/hatcher3/
So, Digg doesn’t develop its own search engine? Where is the innovation?
Why would Digg develop its own search engine if it can use Solr/Lucene/whatever while concentrating its development time on other innovations within their site?
Innovation doesn’t mean you have to develop all the underlying technologies again. If it did, it would be a long release cycle for all our favorite sites/services/software.
The reason is that talking about real-time search is headline grabbing. Both Digg & Twitter have done this recently. Real-time search? Unless you understand what real-time search is or specifically how search engine works in real-time computational frame-work, then you’re a sucker in believing such hype. Look, the IR (information retrieval) community of researchers have been trying to solve this problem for a while, and now, you hear that Twitter & Digg are somehow have invented or found a solution to what the many PhDs of this world in IR have missed or cannot figured out of how to solve?
This problem will be solved via original research and not just from grabbing some open source out there to use which is not real-time and then just claim or made it out that you’re going to change the game of search? It is a laugh. I know how searches work and I haven’t seen any solution to how to solve it at the moment (technologically). This is why Google has announced recently that they’re targeting real-time search as a priority. What does that tell you? It is not that they don’t think real-time search is unimportant, but they have been aware perhaps from years back that this problem is technologically undoable. Microsoft is aware of this too, so as thousands of researchers in IR. The question for Digg & Twitter is, do they have a team of researchers that do original R&Ds? Solving real-time searches is going to come from original R&Ds and not from using existing open sources that everyone uses and also that same open source software doesn’t do real-time search.
Falafulu Fisi
“you hear that Twitter & Digg are somehow have invented or found a solution to what the many PhDs of this world in IR have missed or cannot figured out of how to solve?”
You might want to read Black Swan. Complicated problems don’t always have to be solved by the “experts”. They may come up with a very different solution.
Real-time in nature in six months time..The pace is too high and many might not catch up, still it is not bad try though
Who’s playing catch-up?
http://siteanal...friendfeed.com/
Kevin Rose will be successful in whatever direction he decides to take this company. He’s done a masterful job thus far and still keeps a fairly level head.
Don’t forget, Kevin Rose is an investor in Twitter. He may borrow some elements from twitter’s success, but he’s definitely not trying to compete directly with them. Twitter should welcome a little coopetition, it’s only going to fuel the real-time ecosystem.
Masterful? I believe Flickr and Digg started at the same time right? All Digg has gotten done since the beginning is a lot of PR, beer, and some sushi. Flickr has matured in a useful site that will definitely be around years to come – one of the webs pillars.
He’s been anything but “masterful” imo.
Why are you bringing up Flickr??? Flickr’s a fantastic service (not exactly a cash cow) but it’s in a totally different space. Digg on the other hand has evolved into a content distribution hub like no other. Reddit & Yahoo! Buzz are competing services. If you want to look at how each of those services are doing, Digg is crushing it.
http://siteanal...com+reddit.com/
(Yahoo! Buzz is a subdomain and can’t be tracked with Compete)
About Kevin Rose, sure he knows how to have a good time (beer, sushi & tea [I might add]), but deep down he’s fundamentally passionate about his product and pushing the limits. As an entrepreneur and product manager I would definitely dub his success “masterful”.
For what it’s worth, here are the numbers for the services you’re comparing. Granted it makes absolutely no sense to compare these two companies.
http://siteanal...com+flickr.com/
I think it’s a logo change.
Haha… If you can change your logo, you can change the world.
Hey, there was just an earthquake here.
Digg already had a Twitter competitor, didn’t it shut down? I think it was called Pownce?
My TV was shaken by this earth quake.
Whatt???!! Twitter invented Real-Time??!
Twitter invented Time and Space too, according to MG.
I titter at windmills.
I wish Digg was a bit more real-time, because for now it serves as a place to get updates on what’s been hot on the web the previous day.
It’s just mechanically, Digg has situated its infrastructure in such a way that it is incapable of filtering through the multitude of user submissions in real-time in order to find what’s truly hot and interesting and should go popular.
It takes at least a few hours for something that’s basically already gone viral on Twitter to hit the front page of Digg.
At best, Digg could supplement Twitter, but to compete with it as a provider as what’s really “popular in real-time” would take a redesign of the Digg algorithm at the very least.
this whole concept of real time doesnt exist
I have never used Digg.
seems to me they have been diggin themselves a hole for quite sometime now. slow to innovate and expand. as a stand alone entity its already too late. hopefully they will acquire some strategic landscape, talent and innovate asap. they got alot of catching up too do. best candid startup video i have ever seen. much appreciated.
StartupLocator.com – start your engines
dickheadlocator.com — yeah, I’m talking to you.
You know nothing. You say nothing important. You aren’t interesting. You aren’t funny. Your site is an insignificant spec of dirt on the landscape of the internet. If Fuckedcompany.com was still around, it wouldn’t even let you on it because of how lame your company is. Go away and stop wasting people’s time with you useless comments.
And your reply “get a company in Crunchbase or you don’t matter?” What the hell is that? Are you in Crunchbase? Do you matter? Have you made a dime off that turd Ning site you created?
He didn’t really say much. Seems that is standard operating procedure anymore.
“Stuff is coming. I can’t go into details about it but you’re going to like it. I can’t go into details about why you’re going to like it, but stuff is coming.”
Not sure why you posted on this Michael. Everything you said in this article was included in the previous one with the initial interview.
http://www.tech...te-of-the-union
What am I missing here?
See also: http://en.wikip.../wiki/Harbinger
Everyone wants to jump in to the real-time bandwagon. This is seriously a great space to be. Just curious if there are any search engines that mine these real-time data except Twitter? That’ll be very useful.
Try http://www.boilingpage.com. It’s a great real-time search engine IMHO.
Just a guess,
All user comments will be tracked live, and will mirror into a user feed instantly. So:
12:30, I Dugg this story.
12:42, I commented on this ___ boy this seems inaccurate, blah blah, img:blah ….read more
12:50, I submitted this story, please read. Everyone (my friends) please click.
12:55, @person, your comment was great, i’m going to follow you.
So instead of just digging stories, users are trying to build reputable comments/followers. Comments aren’t tied to one particular story, but are streamed under each users account.
So basically Twitter tacked on the back of Digg.
So if a Twitter user can have 1million followers, how hard would it be to get 50,000 clicks on their stories?
They already have this, check out the recent activity box on any digg profile page. You can also track activity of your friends/people you follow.
Anyone remember plastic.com? They were the digg.com of 2000/2001. Now they’re just a nothing site. digg.com is heading for a similar future.
Meanwhile, here’s a beautiful poem I composed:-
Digg’s 15 minutes of fame
It’s such a shame
When the stories are gamed
And the users lame
It’s always the same
It’s Kevin what’s-his-name
That’s who to blame
Real time: fast food.
Book: gourmet.
User added votes will not necessarily lead to more relevancy. Instead it has a bias of its own. With current iGoogle changes also Google has already jumped on the train of that sort of user interaction. Digg.com might be an interesting candidate for M&A.
interesting what will real really mean in the future
can’t get better than this. a post about digg and twitter!
I honestly think that DIGG is a dead company. Add them to the deadpool because this movie will not end well. My guess is that we will see a fire sale that is at a valuation that is below their last capital raise.
They missed their window. The asset is dead.
thank you
Is anyone else completely unimpressed by Rose’s answer? Usually company leaders have visions that they can share because only they can technically execute, or they’re ahead of the competition, or whatever. He doesn’ t seem to have – anything.
i cant wait to use this realtime thingy that the internets are a buzz about, in real life. Could you imagine life in realtime, that would be the next big thing.
Realtime.. thats all you hear about nowadays.
Kuddos to Kevin Rose. Kevin is an internet native and he understands the web. For a company to be successful, they must adapt and change. Can’t wait to see the new features!
Wait
Diggs=Likes
Realtime=Twitter-Like
Comments=Conversations
OK, So when can I audition to host FriendFeed Nation?
Digg Spy anyone?
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
Teddy Roosevelt
I meant that quote towards the critics in the comments not towards Michael’s post. Also I think constructive criticism is great, but some comments did not seem that constructive.
have you seen digg’s traffic over last year???
didn’t realize it was happening but they are looking like a death spiral in the making
Kevin Rose should have sold out when the going was good
Really I am not cleared with the topic discussed in this post.
Sorry to say but Digg is no longer there
it is all about Twitter time .