News that link recommendation platform Digg would be making a comeback warmed the hearts of many who long for the “old” web — where sharing felt more organic, more exciting, and definitely less destructive to everything we know and love about the world. Hey, I’m not immune to this nostalgia, either.
The site is being spun up again by its co-founder, Kevin Rose, and, curiously enough, Alexis Ohanian, the co-founder of one-time Digg nemesis Reddit. Ohanian left Reddit’s board in 2020 — and now seems ready to take it on.
For those who missed it, or may have forgotten, Digg was launched in 2004 with a groundbreaking idea to let users submit links they enjoyed for others to vote up or down. During the site’s heyday in the so-called web 2.0 era, the most popular links on its front page would receive millions of visits in just a few hours.
The Digg button, once ubiquitous across the web, was a precursor to Facebook’s “like” thumbs-up button. Ultimately, Digg lost out to Reddit after a series of poorly received design changes caused users to revolt. Today, Reddit has 102 million daily active users, each with a muscle-memory for posting and reading there that will be extremely hard to shake.
So what’s the play here? Why now rather than at any point over the past 14 years since Rose bowed out?
In one of several articles announcing Digg’s revival, Rose and Ohanian talked about creating a more civil space by using artificial intelligence for smarter moderation that’s less onerous on volunteer moderators. They suggest there’s a yearning to tackle some of the scourges of the modern web, such as sophisticated bad actors, without heavy-handed human intervention. Rose said he’d previously felt there wasn’t “anything new or novel to tackle some of these bigger issues” — until now.
Reddit rivalry
But let’s be real: nobody embarks on an effort like this on a hunch that they can use AI to foster better vibes around an old brand. Instead, Reddit’s astounding performance since going public likely has caught the attention of Rose and Ohanian, who are both backing the effort with their own wealth, plus investments from their attached venture capital funds.
Investor optimism for Reddit comes thanks to its user growth, which was helped by a deal with Google to surface Reddit discussions prominently (some might argue too prominently) within Google search results. As part of the deal, Reddit content — the sprawling, timely discussions between real humans — is fed into the big data woodchipper behind Google’s AI models.
Read: Reddit shares close up 48% in market debut
Reddit has struck a similar arrangement with OpenAI, giving the AI company access to “Reddit’s Data API, which provides real-time, structured and unique content from Reddit”, according to a press release.
At a time when AI companies are becoming increasingly concerned about running out of training material, Reddit has become a goldmine, a continually updated fount of human discussion and passion. AI deals now account for around 10% of Reddit’s total revenue, according to its most recent filings. Plus, Reddit’s traffic growth has meant it can sell more advertising.
Digg, then, is counting on there being room for two goldmines, and that it’s best placed to be the second gold “Digg”er, so to speak. It won’t be easy. A publicity push, helped by nostalgia, will get things going for a week or two — but these sites live and die on momentum and the all-important network effect.
One tactic will be for Digg to play on Reddit users’ growing distrust of the company’s priorities now that it has shareholders to answer to. There have been recent protests over restrictions on Reddit’s API, but there were no meaningful long-term effects, largely due to the lack of a viable alternative. Could Digg change that? Could it steal its lunch back from Reddit after all these years? I think it’s a huge ask. But at the very least, it’s gonna be a good old-fashioned web 2.0 slugfest. I’ve certainly missed those. — Dave Lee, (c) 2025 Bloomberg LP
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