Gawker
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disasters
Apple's Conference Breaks Digg
The traffic, it was too much: Digg just went down, a likely victim of an overwhelming surge of traffic around the ongoing keynote speech at Apple's developer conference. What's weird about this news? More »
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By Ryan TateComment by flyover: You mean "like a real trooper", right? P.S. Saw a failwhale at least once this morning. more » | Other threads
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So Gay
Digg's Fratty News Site Has a No-Homo Policy
If you wanted to imagine a topsy-turvy world where straight 19-year-old jock-nerds ran the media, just visit Digg. The site is so laden with antigay epithets that it automatically censors the word "homo" from headlines. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by coyote1284: P.E.T.U.: OMG, Owen Thomas, are you reaching for outrage or what? Digg has an automatic filter that censors the common obscenities... 1 Responses | Other threads
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valleywag
The Global Village Is Too Poor for YouTube
Just a few years ago, venture capitalists pushed Internet startups to conquer every last corner of the world. Now they're asking why they don't just pull the plug on the Third World. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by oneinsixbillion: 2009 and imperialist tendencies are still strong more » | Other threads
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armchair general
Why Amazon.com Should Buy Digg
Digg needs to sell itself. Kevin Rose's headline-voting site is drowning; the more popular it gets, the more red ink it generates. But who needs a bunch of news stories rated? Here's an idea: Amazon.com. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by ClockOnTheStove: Amazon's reviews can be wickedly entertaining as well. Case in point, Looking For - Best of David Hasselhoff: [www.amazon.com]... 1 Responses | Other threads
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party report
SXSW, the Conference for Julia Allison and Other People Lacking Real Jobs
What recession? More than 10,000 revelers are expected for this year's SXSW Interactive conference in Austin, Texas this week. With no real work at hand, they're hitting the parties hard — especially the unofficial ones. More »
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By Scott KidderComment by if_i_only_had_a_heart: sxsw ... didn't that used to be a music convention? 3 Responses | Other threads
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open caption
Digg Founder Kevin Rose Meets Platonic Ideal of Digg User
Kevin Rose, founder of the Web headline-voting service Digg, meets a fan Saturday after a live Diggnation taping at the South By Southwest conference in Austin, Texas.
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By James DelComment by wasurhandle: What's with the wet stain on that guys shirt? Someone got Digged too hard. 5 Responses | Other threads
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anniversaries
The Web at 20: Not Quite Old Enough to Drink, Yet Drives Us to It
Dear important scientist Tim Berners-Lee: Thank you for inventing the World Wide Web 20 years ago. It's really great and stuff! But were you aware of the crimes committed in your name? More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by tetragami: Oh Christ, someday I will be explaining to kids that I am older than the internet. 11 Responses | Other threads
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twitterati
The Twitterati Are All Over the Place
Are all the Twitterers headed to the SXSW festival, like Digg's Kevin Rose? Actually, no! Here's where Boing Boing's Xeni Jardin, Salon.com edi-bore Joan Walsh, and Politico's Patrick Gavin recorded their time-wasting thoughts: More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by swagv: This regular feature has the same "Weee! Look at me, I'm on Twitter!" virtues as all those "Weee! Look at... 1 Responses | Other threads
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diggnation
After Jimmy Fallon, Is Kevin Rose's Buddy Act Over?
Did you hear? Digg founder Kevin Rose was on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon Wednesday. As was Rose's forgettable Diggnation cohost — what's his name? Ah, yes — Alex Albrecht, who we hear wants out. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by Widget Economist: Rose is a symbolic mantra of the "Young, do-nothing, be a cryptic, stuck up asshole and you can become famous... 2 Responses | Other threads
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digg
Gasp! Village Voice Media abuses Digg. But ineffectively.
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field guide
Shira Lazar, Kevin Rose's Latest Fling
Having famously "plowed through" San Francisco's eligible bachelorettes, Digg founder Kevin Rose went L.A. for his most recent paramour, Shira Lazar. Who is this Web-video wannabe with links to Dov Charney and Julia Allison? More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by LilyBartleby: She's an upgrade from his previous paramour, Roseys Palm. 9 Responses | Other threads
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black holes
Why Reality Will Bury Digg's Profit Dreams
Digg, the raucous online news-rating site, has laid off 8 people from its 75-person workforce. CEO Jay Adelson writes that the company will "aggressively focus on reaching profitability within the year." There's no way. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by Craig Agranoff: Show me any company who was able to get profitable by having outside ad sales staffs. Well put Owen,... 2 Responses | Other threads
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kevin rose
Digg Founder Wants to Date Jennifer Aniston
Kevin Rose, the boyish founder of Digg, a testosterone-soaked news-discussion site, has resolved to "date someone seriously" in 2009. Specifically, he plans to woo Marley & Me star Jennifer Aniston.
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By Owen ThomasComment by The Boulevard of Broken Queens: why not? she is lonely and desperate, apparently 9 Responses | Other threads
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black holes
It Costs Digg $5 Million a Year to Run the Internet
Perhaps Digg really is the future of the news business. The headline-discussion site, once an icon of the Web 2.0 movement, is losing millions of dollars a year.
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By Owen ThomasComment by surlybastard: Can someone please explain to me why Digg needs so much money to operate? 5 Responses | Other threads
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pownce
Temptress of Silicon Valley shuts down useless site
Earlier this year, Leah Culver appeared on the cover of a tech magazine blowing an enormous pink bubble. But the shrill-voiced San Francisco programmer no longer desires fame — even the modest sort afforded Silicon Valley's microcelebrities. The turnabout seems odd, considering how aggressively she once courted notoriety.
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By Owen ThomasComment by jpontin: "Is it sexist to point this out?" Ah, yeah, Owen - it kind of is. People date in their own... 10 Responses | Other threads
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we read twitter so you don't have to
Kevin Rose's cold tweeting in your face
Digg poster boy Kevin Rose is so hot that 726 people have already subscribed to a Twitter stream on which Rose pretends to be a head cold. For context, New York Times reporter Matt Richtel has 819 followers to the novel he's posting as tweets. Note to self: Become a celebrity first, then take up writing.
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By Paul BoutinComment by Alaska Miller: 2270 people follow a twitter account iJustine made for her phone: [twitter.com] WHO THE FUCK CARES 2 Responses | Other threads
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mine is greener
Jay Adelson pimps his ride
Will the CEO of Digg make up his mind on who he wants to be? I once asked him what car he drove, and he took pains to let me know he had a suburban-dad Honda minivan and an environmentalist-standard-issue Toyota Prius. Just a regular guy! But he later complained when I suggested he wasn't a "rock star." I'm thinking Adelson — who commutes from his actual suburban-dad life in upstate New York to his CEO gig in san Francisco — is working on sexing up his image. A tipster says Adelson has just gotten a $109,000 all-electric, obsidian black Tesla Roadster. Which, if you think about it, is exactly the racy kind of vehicle most suburban dads his age might want to buy, if only they could afford it.
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By Owen ThomasComment by HarcourtMed?n: Commutes from upstate NY to SF?! WTF? nice carbon footprint there buddy. You could own 65 Priuses and that wouldn't... more » | Other threads
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deals
Digg's Kevin Rose interviews former Digg suitor Al Gore
It only takes hearing so many jokes about Al Gore inventing Twitter to figure out that the former vice president has signed up for the microblogging service. Wisely, he's not really participating in the site, just using it to market his websites and announce his interview with Digg founder Kevin Rose, which airs tonight on Current, the Gore-backed cable channel. Current and Digg have been teaming up for a series of election-related events, including a party on election night. But Rose and Gore's acquaintance goes back almost two years. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by giania: Well either he's multi-account spamming or he's already got immitators because I was recently friended by [twitter.com] who is pimping... more » | Other threads
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digg
Websites race to take credit for Obama victory
Forget hacking voting machines; our media brethren are, at this moment, most concerned with gaming Digg to get out the vote for their stories about Barack Obama's apparent victory in the electoral college. (Our sister site Gawker was late to the game; its headline submission for "Obama Wins!" was seventh in line, judging by the URL.) Taking the lead: "Digg This If You Voted for Obama!" with more than 20,000 votes. It points to a CNN.com story. New media serves merely to confirm the victory of old media.
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By Owen ThomasComment by weezle3: Just to note that "former digg programmer" started his day promoting one man, one vote: [www.owenbyrne.com] Unlike, um, digg. more » | Other threads
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media
Current broadcasts worst election coverage ever
Want to watch North Carolina gyrate to a hip-hop beat? Tune into Current, Al Gore's user-generated cable channel. I don't mean people dancing in the streets; I mean an outline of North Carolina pulsating. The channel is carrying, on live TV, headlines you could read on Digg and messages you could read on Twitter, along with video snippets from current viewers. Other than that, it's offering the same kind of exit-poll projections you could get on CNN, but in hot pink and cyan instead of the traditional red-blue-gold color scheme. Digg founder Kevin Rose pops up occasionally with live updates from a San Francisco night club where Current, Digg, and Twitter are hosting an election-night party. It's Web 2.0 in your living room — and it makes me wish I could Brillo-pad the "vision" out of "television."
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By Owen ThomasComment by SupriyaNoodle: I was at the Digg/Current election party at 330 Ritch and this coverage was actually *awesome*. I can imagine how... 2 Responses | Other threads
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great moments in pr
Kevin Rose runs from the crowd
Why is Kevin Rose on a publicity binge? In the past two months, the founder of headline-voting site Digg has garnered two magazine covers. There he is, with a smoldering leer on local San Francisco magazine 7x7. The look reminds everyone why Diggnation cohost Alex Albrecht once said that Rose, a prolific dater, has "plowed through everyone in town." For Inc., Rose participated in a wacky crowd shoot which echoed the Beatles' "A Hard Day's Night." It's obvious why Rose is a hot commodity: Write about him, and traffic to your magazine's website will soar. (Will he sell print copies? I doubt Digg users visit newsstands.) More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by D IS FOR DENTATA: Owen, I love how you parse this one back down to earth. :-) more » | Other threads
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caption contest
Traffic is the new profit
We're not sure we buy Inc. magazine's cover math, any more than we believed BusinessWeek when that magazine told us Digg founder Kevin Rose was worth $60 million. But the cover is impressive. (As are Rose's biceps. Photoshop?) Your suggestions for captions are welcome in the comments; the best will become the post's new headline. Yesterday's winner: DrewFinch, for "All your data are belong to us." (Photo by aprilini)
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By Owen ThomasComment by Alaska Miller: I used to get Inc magazines for free from some weird spam email i replied to. The quality of the... 3 Responses | Other threads
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confirmed
Digg users even smarter than we thought
Layoff-driven journalism: "Let's expose all the patterns in the media! It'll be great for us! Don't forget to link to our previous coverage." Owen, please listen to what readers are telling us: Bury, bury, bury. -
gaming the system
5 reasons to Digg this article now
In "King of Digg," GangstaDawg4Life takes on FroggietheDestroyer! This is the future of media. Kevin Rose conceived Digg, his so-called social news site, as an experiment in democratizing the consumption of news. Rose's formula: Get rid of middleman editors. Replace them with the wisdom of crowds. Or so he says. But while he was starting Digg, Rose was a TV host on G4TV, the cable channel about videogames. That's the secret of Digg's success: It's a videogame. An old-school journalist would wonder: "Why do they keep score on individual submissions? Doesn't that reveal which of your stories were believed most, or at least read most? Damn, there goes my Pulitzer!" But now, Rose and company are fighting with Digg's most active users, trying to blunt their success. Here are five reasons — from a 13-year veteran of MSM formulas — why Digg's management should hug their top Diggers even tighter. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by Paul Boutin: Digg users like articles about themselves. Who doesn't? But Digg's formula keeps media professionals like me from publishing... 1 Responses | Other threads
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Owen Byrne
Former Digg programmer ready for his book deal ... hello? Hello?
"Anyone out there who would like to talk about a book contract, I think I have some compelling material, given the right deal," trolls Owen Byrne, who left Digg for the presumably more stable workplace at TravelPod, a travel-blogging site launched in 1997 and now part of the Expedia network of sites. Book agents, Byrne's full pitch after the jump. No fighting! More »
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By Paul BoutinComment by wchan_sea_wat: Luckily Owen doesn't work at Google. 1 Responses | Other threads
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jackpot
Did Kevin Rose cash out?
The whispers have started: How much money did Kevin Rose make personally by selling shares in Digg's latest round of VC funding? The talk that Rose has sold shares is driven by equal parts envy and admiration. To understand the reaction, it helps to realize that the notion of an entrepreneur selling his own shares directly to investors before a public offering — getting out of the company just as other investors were getting in — used to be taboo in Silicon Valley. But that was before Wall Street's IPO machine broke down, and before merger activity dried up. Rose is at the vanguard of a seismic shift in how the Valley pays off its entrepreneurs. More » -
burn rate
Digg announces major increase in spending
Burn, baby, burn! That's the coded message in Digg CEO Jay Adelson's blog post about a "major expansion effort." The website, whose users rate and discuss news headlines, is hiring for 19 open positions, with more to come, as Digg expands internationally. Only at the end does Adelson mention how he's making this happen: $28.7 million in venture-capital financing. Coming after failed acquisition talks with Google, the financing round makes it clear that Digg is now planning to get bigger rather than sell out. It's a strange thing to celebrate. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by Figaro: This new money will increase the Digg's acquisition price by at least 40-50% which would put Digg in $300M range.... 2 Responses | Other threads
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self-promotion
5 rules for making a company video worth watching
Austin-based interactive ad agency Tocquigny embarrassed itself with a video meant to show prospective interns how fun it is to work at the company over the summer. Instead of showing how quirky and Internet-savvy Tocquigny was, it proved to be a turnoff — and a ripoff. Besides not copying someone else's work, what could Tocquigny have done differently? Using five examples the agency should have followed, we'll explain how to do a self-promotional corporate video right: More » -
loser-generated content
Google's willing to employ more human meatbags, just not pay them
If there's a successful business model in the whole "user-generated content" revolution, it's in compnies getting for free services they used to pay for. Google is planning to let users rerank search results for it. Digg's users already do something like this for news headlines — likely why Google was interested in buying the well-trafficked geek-popularity contest. So why pass on it? By applying similar techniques to search results instead of news, Google doesn't have to worry about charges of copying Digg. Rather than beg Digg to sell, better to borrow functionality — and steal free labor from users. More »
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By Jackson WestComment by gkanapathy: Google's original PageRank algorithm already used (and uses) other people to help with the ranking. Sure, "important pages are pages... 1 Responses | Other threads
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great moments in pr
At DNC, Google beckons bloggers with happy endings
Have you heard about Google's "Big Tent," the $100 luxury newsroom Google has set up for bloggers at the Democratic National Convention? If not, here's another story on the Internet where reporters go, Oh man, Google is totes on the pulse, giving all the intrepid young blogger kids at the Democratic National Convention this week a safe place to get massaged for free by ladies and plug in their 'iPones" — read the label — while they change the world together! More »
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Comment by r0y: glad to see my stock dollars going to waste. wonder if they'll treat the RNC nearly as well. more » | Other threads
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gaming the system
Look, it's Katie Couric in a Digg T-shirt — what?
CBS hired anchor Katie Couric to turn return its news division to ratings glory. Didn't happen. So like any good media organization in the 21st century, CBS has resorted to good old-fashioned Diggbaiting. Below a video of Couric in her office, sporting a Digg T-shirt and reading a script — "Oh, hi everybody! Nice to see you. Welcome to CBS News. Sorry about my mess." Putting a woman in well-cut Digg clothing is a trick as old as the site of course. Two years ago alt-porn star Posh Suicide did the same thing, drawing 2,828 Diggs. Couric has a ways to go to catch up: Her video is sitting at a meager 40 votes after 18 hours. But then, we'd already discovered that Digg users aren't quite the slobbering teenage boys spammers assume they are. More » -
diggbait
Digg in Bed With Russian Menace!
Take a look at the front page of crazy-huge crowdsourced web aggregator Digg today and you'll see a totally different portrait of the war in Georgia than you'd find on the front of the New York Times. It's not the scary specter of Russia asserting its dominance over the region and thumbing its nose at the West, gambling that we won't respond with force. It's not tanks rolling toward a soverign nation's capital in the hopes of overthrowing its pro-American leader. No, it is, as usual, a conspiracy by George W. Bush and the Mainstream Media to confuse and deceive you. A false story propagated by those terrible, biased gatekeepers. Also—Russian tanks are fucking awesome!!!! Why the hell would typically nerd-news and cute photo-obsessed little Digg take such a counterintuitive view of a war being waged on the other side of the globe? Three simple reasons.
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geeks gone wild
Kevin Rose shaves his head, and 806 people watch
On Sunday, Digg founder Kevin Rose went online, turned on his webcam, and proceeded to shave his head. A Britney Spears-style breakdown for San Francisco's linkbait lothario? No, it was just some charity bet. But we still wonder if former flame Julia Allison's recent run through town had anything to do with Rose's mental state. The saddest thing of it all: 806 people tuned into Rose's lifecasting session to watch.
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By Owen ThomasComment by Operator: You know, Kevin isn't the only one who shaves his head because of a bet! [tinyurl.com] more » | Other threads
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rumormonger
Google nixing Digg deal?
A tipster tells us Google has backed out of talks to buy Digg, the popular news-discussion site fronted by Kevin Rose, the Web-video personality and San Francisco Casanova. There have been hints all week that Google has been cooling on Digg. Marissa Mayer, Google's reigning princess of pageviews, had once fancied Digg as a means of improving Google News, one of her Web properties. Last month, at her behest, acquisition talks were getting serious. But then Mayer brashly (and perhaps foolishly) announced Wednesday that Google News generated $100 million a year in revenues for Google. Translation: Who needs Digg? More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by Tango404: Digg is not as efficient now as people play with it all the time. more » | Other threads
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recap
Jackson West, please come home — all is forgiven
Why did I let Jackson West take a vacation? While our associate editor was away, we actually wrote something nice about Gavin Newsom — and he only had to save San Francisco from a rogue IT guy to do it! Microsoft's Windows chief, Kevin Johnson, ended up in Sunnyvale, Calif. — but not, as he'd hoped, in the corner office at Yahoo HQ. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg flubbed more media interviews this week, prompting us to suggest he get help. Maybe he could take tips from the Internet-famous Julia Allison, who crashed his developers' conference? More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by BartKela: @mrfomoco: Yes, that's what blog comments are for! more » | Other threads
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acquisitions
Digg founder Kevin Rose: "We're buying Google"
At a Chicago meetup yesterday, Digg CEO Jay Adelson would not comment on recent rumors that Google has renewed talks to buy the site. “There is no word,” Adelson said. “We commented on one of these rumors before and it got us in trouble. There is nothing to say.” Digg founder Kevin Rose wasn't so shy, joking with the audience: “We’re buying Google.” Adelson did, however, tell the audience that following smaller social-news rivals Reddit and Mixx, Digg will soon allow users to create their own sites using Digg's technology. Adelson said the new feature would be out in six months. The Windy Citizen reports: More »
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Comment by Rachel Marsden: No, you're not "buying Google". Shut up, son. Go to your room. more » | Other threads
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gaming the system
10 Digg stories not even Kevin Rose could make popular
Of the 377 stories Digg founder Kevin Rose has submitted to his social news site, 367 went to the site's front page. When I read this, all I could think was: God, those 10 that didn't make it must have really sucked. Maybe he should have pretended to be a hot girl? We thought we'd help thespammers"social media marketers" out by listing Kevin Rose's failed submissions below. If these stories couldn't hit the front page, with Rose's hordes of mancrushing fanboys clicking on them,then they're the exact kind of story our Digg-optimizing friends shouldn't even bother with. We'll tell you why. More »
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Comment by Stokel: Just signed up to this page to correct giania, it is a Stella Artois, and it's from Belgium. Peroni do is... more » | Other threads
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acquisitions
Report: Google and Digg talks on again
Google cofounder Larry Page and Digg CEO Jay Adelson were all smiles at Allen & Co.'s Sun Valley retreat. Was it because they had just wrapped up a long-rumored deal for Google to buy Digg, with the price in the neighborhood of $200 million? TechCrunch says talks are on again. (Photo by Reuters)
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By Owen ThomasComment by Tim Faulkner: @jaydot: Seems so. Unless Google is so mellow they don't mind Digg's new tie-up with Facebook. more » | Other threads
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social news
Half of the 50 hottest girls on Digg are fake — but the site works anyway
Conventional wisdom has it that males on the Internet gravitate toward pictures of pretty women like hungry honeybees to a sugary tulip, and click, click, click. It's why Tila Tequila has 3,345,634 MySpace friends and Tania Derveaux has 108,907 YouTube subscribers. It's why, on social news site Digg, so many spammers pretend to be attractive women — to attract votes for their stories from Digg users incapable of holding onto their mouse finger when faced with a picture of a pretty woman. But does this method work? We decided to find out. More » -
photoshop
The sad thing is, we think Digg CEO Jay Adelson might actually think he's Tom Cruise
A recent photo of sunglass-sporting Digg CEO Jay Adelson with slightly more nerdy Google cofounder Larry Page sent reader theodp on an '80s nostalgia trip. (Photo by Reuters, photoillustration by theodp)
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By Owen ThomasComment by MikeTy: LOL!... that's hilarious. They do look alike. more » | Other threads
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Sat Jul 11
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