Digg founder Kevin Rose launched a side project called WeFollow, a Twitter directory, earlier this year. Twitter users can go to the site and add themselves under a specific category. Without much in the way of marketing, the site has grown to 654,000 Twitter users, all of which went to the site and added themselves. And now, someone with knowledge of the deal tells us, Rose has transferred WeFollow ownership to Digg.
This wasn’t exactly an acquisition, though, because Digg didn’t pay anything for the site. “The data became very useful for Digg,” says our source, and it was awkward keeping it outside of the company.
Digg has long been planning to launch a more real time version of the site, and we’ve speculated that Digg will soon surface new top stories based at least partially on stuff becoming popular on Twitter and other similar services. WeFollow gives Digg data on who the top Twitter users are for various categories.
WeFollow Relaunch:
WeFollow is also changing the way it ranks users. Currently it’s based only on total follower counts on Twitter. In the next day or so, though, WeFollow will change its algorithm and give more weight to users who tag themselves properly, and then have followers who have also tagged themselves similarly. For examply, if TechCrunch is tagged “startups” and a lot of people following TechCrunch have also tagged themselves startups, that gives a lot more weight to our account in that category. This goal is to reduce spam and give better data.
Below are screenshots of the new, yet to be launched service. The top shows the SEO tag by number of followers, the current way WeFollow ranks users. The bottom shows ranking by influence. Matt Cutts jumps to the top of the list, even though he’s only no. 8 in overall followers.
Who cares. In a nutshell, Digg just bought a third party directory service. Plus, their traffic has been tanking anyway. So pretty much this is a “Safe Face” acquisition
The flaw with Wefollow is that, it only helps those with high number of followers to get more followers.
it also help people who are interested in specific topics find relevant twitter accounts to that topic.
Exactly.
http://wefollow...m/twitter/bacon
yep. relevant data. and how kevin likes to name them ‘tasters’ who curate good stuff.
In my understanding it helps to Kevin Rose to earn money selling his side project to “his” company.
Well, the blog post says that Digg didn’t pay anything for the site.
I agree its probably a “save face” acquisition.
However, I never heard of this service until now. I’ve been looking for something to help me find others who are interested in stocks. Useful tool, but probably doesn’t make sense for Digg to own.
http://www.traderbots.com
Digg traffic has been tanking? Please provide proof.
http://www.alex...teinfo/digg.com thinks otherwise.
Yeah, I love comments like that from someone who clearly doesn’t look up anything before posting.
http://siteanal...om+twitter.com/
Phew, for a second I thought you meant me :-S
Sorry, I was meaning to say Wefollow’s traffic has been tanking not Digg’s.
No, you ment to say Diggs, because nobody cares about wefollow’s traffic.
I agree that digg has gone downhill recently IMHO
Digg traffic is up 5 million uniques this year alone. Sure, part of that is inflated by the DiggBar, but not even close to “tanking.”
http://siteanal...e.com/digg.com/
Great timing with twitter rolling out lists
Well, it certainly targets an extremely specific niche. A dwindling niche too, once the Twitter fad starts to die.
they won’t find miley on the list and miley’s where it’s at
stick that up your @
Am I the only one who is a pretty active twitterer but doesn’t give a flying fuck about wefollow? At all.
If Digg were toilet paper it would be 1-ply.
WeFollow is currently down. Maybe they are making it more obvious who owns it by succumbing to the digg effect.
Maybe you forgot to mention that Mshble dugg this up.
You should check http://www.locafollow.com
LocaFollow lets you locate Twitter users by searching in their Bio and Location fields.
Its results are powered by the Google Search Engine, so you don’t need to add yourself to the site, Google will find you, and LocaFollow going to consult your profile details using the Twitter API.
Then you can follow all the users in you search results by a simple click of the “Bulk Follow” button.
Alfredo
I like digg and twitter. I like to find new people so wefollow should be handy
Not surprising, especially because Rose invested in Twitter.
This acquisition makes no sense for Digg. What is really happening is that Digg won’t exit anytime soon (if at all) gven how much they’ve raised and Kevin knows it. As a result Kevin keeps trying to make money on the side by doing side projects (isn’t this illegal?) and flipping them. In this case he is flipping something into Digg that makes no sense whatsoever from an acquisition standpoint for some extra personal cash. Totally unethical.
I’m not sure that’s the case… We still have to see this big Digg update the guys were talking about a few months ago. They’re trying something new and maybe Twitter will become a major part of it.
Did anybody else notice that the AdSense being served up was only the public service announcements? Either out of inventory or under the Google microscope
I think WeFollow’s data can make Digg much more relevant.
That’s exactly what I think.
I use twitter at work and follow people who has something add on my projects. And I found those people at wefollow.com
Digg never caught my attention because of its ( in my opinion ) irrelevant content.
So i guess that this merge would result in more relevant content to the Digg service.
And more: it seems like most web apps are converging to one linked service. That’s most because of the “sharing that” common sense in the web nowadays.
It appears like a helpful utility.
I dig up Andrew Mager’s comment.
Ahem, #relevant #digg #doyourresearchbeforeyouspeak
I like WeFollow! Good article!
The correct title of this article is “Kevin Rose gives Twitter Lists competitor to Digg.”
“it was awkward keeping it outside of the company.”
Prithee, dear sir, tell us why it was, as you say, “awkward”?
not exactly newsworthy..cuz no REAL transaction, but story should’ve just focused more on the relaunch if people are even interested in that…:/
Last week I was adding my startup’s profile to wefollow and when I scrolled down to the bottom of the page I noticed that wefollow was sporting the “(c) 2009, Digg Inc.” I didn’t think anything of it because i figured Kevin just started the company under the Digg Corp for simplicity and to save some cash on incorporation fees. It does make sense why he would use this info for Digg.com, good move Kevin.
I am going to look good on WeFollow. I have been active on Twitter and I have more than 26K followers.
case of what happens when a company implements a feature you hope to one day sell to them
Just added myself. I hope people don’t assume that I autofollow cause that isn’t the case.
TechCrunch, You’re CSS seems all messed up. I can’t read a single article, in Firefox and IE.
Headings are blue and text is behind the pictures. No line breaks either.
Is that legal?
Agree! Something fishy is going on here. Smells like Enron …
I want to start a site called, “WhoCaresWhoYouFollow.com” WeFollow was only a billboard for people with more than 10,000 followers anyway. You really could find anyone on there that had something interesting to say.
Now we will see Some Front page from Wefollow
if Kevin Rose released his on dumps on the web it’d get traffic. A no-brainer idea + well known web personality? Of course it’ll work