Digg lays off staff and shuts down app as company retools

Digg — Kevin Rose’s reboot of his once-popular link-sharing tract — is laying disconnected a sizable information of its staff, the institution announced connected Friday. The startup is not closing, however, Digg CEO Justin Mezzell said. Instead, Rose volition instrumentality to enactment connected Digg full-time arsenic the institution tries to find its footing.

Rose volition proceed to enactment arsenic an advisor astatine investing steadfast True Ventures, but volition marque Digg his superior absorption from present connected out.

The startup had acceptable retired to connection an alternate to existing assemblage forums, wherever radical could station and stock links, media, and substance and prosecute successful topical discussions. But portion Digg had clever ideas connected however to amended mean contented and verify that users were who they claimed to be, the institution admits it was overwhelmed by bots adjacent successful its earliest days.

Nodding to the “dead net theory,” which claims today’s web is much bots than people, Mezzell describes the occupation of combating bot spam successful a station on the Digg website.

“When the Digg beta launched, we instantly noticed posts from SEO spammers noting that Digg inactive carried meaningful Google nexus authority,” the blog station astir the layoffs states. “Within hours, we got a sensation of what we’d lone heard rumors about. The net is present populated, successful meaningful part, by blase AI agents and automated accounts. We knew bots were portion of the landscape, but we didn’t admit the scale, sophistication, oregon velocity astatine which they’d find us.”

The institution said it banned tens of thousands of accounts, deployed interior tooling, and worked with outer vendors, but it wasn’t enough. For a forum tract babelike connected votes from users to find however contented ranked, not being capable to tackle the bot occupation meant the votes connected its tract couldn’t beryllium trusted.

“This isn’t conscionable a Digg problem. It’s an net problem,” Mezzell notes.

In addition, the exec said that taking connected the incumbents (likely a notation to Reddit’s pull) was excessively hard, calling them not conscionable a moat but a wall.

The institution didn’t stock however galore radical were included successful the layoffs, but said that a tiny squad volition proceed to rebuild Digg arsenic thing “genuinely different.” As of now, the Digg app is besides nary more, arsenic the station is the lone happening connected Digg’s website. (The Diggnation podcast volition continue, however.)

Rose and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian acquired what remained of the aged Digg past year, intending to physique up a tract that focused connected communities wherever moderators and admins had much power and ownership. They accomplished this done a leveraged buyout by True Ventures, Ohanian’s steadfast Seven Seven Six, Rose and Ohanian themselves, on with the task steadfast S32. Funding details weren’t public.

The Digg mobile app, which offered a personalized provender and others showing trending and apical posts, has been removed from the App Store. Digg was not instantly disposable for comment.