Digg Founder, Kevin Rose has been running the company since a vacancy was made in April when co-founder and CEO, Jay Adelson, stepped down. Signs of tension between Rose and Adelson were reported several months earlier on the website, Tech Crunch. It was about that time that Rose slowly loosened his grip on the shovel that is Digg.
Version four of Digg was supposed to launch in 2009. Rose and the Digg Board of Directors grew frustrated at the lack of direction. It was April fourth when Adelson announced he was stepping down. Rose, who had scarce been seen around Digg for several months, was again taking on a full-time role. He graciously thanked Adelson and went on to announce, “I am excited to be taking on the role of Chairman and acting CEO, driving Digg forward on our promise to enable social cu-ration of the world’s content and the conversation around it.”
It was reported that Rose was not satisfied with Digg V4, and planned to make more changes. A Tech Crunch interview from 2009 has Rose speaking of overhauling Digg and making it work in “real time.” Rose had visions of sending Digg in a “completely new direction.”
At the end of August 2010 Digg hired Matt Williams, a former Amazon exec, to fill Adelson’s shoes. Rose holds the position of chief architect.
Version four of Digg launched last week. Digg introduced the ability to follow friends, faster architecture, and personalized news. Features not available were the ability to bury stories and check upcoming stories (the latter is slated to be restored).
There were several issues as the new Digg stumbled off the starting blocks. One of the issues was the quantity of traffic. Digg redirected to a system that was built from the ground up and beta tested for two months, but it couldn’t handle the traffic surge stemming from Digg’s relaunch last Wednesday. Digg’s VP of Product Keval Desai told Read Write Web, “”Hindsight is 20/20. We made a calculated decision to test the site in beta and then launch. We had a game plan and clearly it did not go smoothly. In hindsight, there are several things that could have been done better.”
Desai spoke of Digg’s “broader mission,” including becoming more accessible to smaller publishers, as well as its users. Although Digg traffic is equal or higher, Desai stated, “it is still early going.” If Digg wants to leverage its recent growth, it will need to more carefully iterate its product in the future.
An update from Rose on August 31st listed changes to be forthcoming. These included changes to algorithms, time stamps, site stability, and more.
What are people saying now? Public opinion, as calculated by Mashable, is very one sided. Users are upset about the stories reaching the front page, and the expanded audience Digg is trying to appeal to. According to a Mashable poll, over 78% (of over 6,000 responses) prefer the old Digg to the new version.
How about you? Do you prefer the new Digg?
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