A Revolution in News

Description: Digg is rewriting the rules of media by making every user an editor.

Question: Is Digg the Boston Tea Party of the media?

Transcript:  I think that Digg is very much-- it’s a living and breathing thing that is impossible to kind of wrap your head around.  And you never know what’s going to happen on the site.  I think that’s one of the things that brings a lot of people back to the site.  Like I think that when you take a look at-- when I wake up in the morning, you know, it’s the same feeing in my gut that I had, you know, 3 ½ years ago, and that’s what the hell’s in the front page.  Like I have no idea, you know.  And it’s that freaky kind of, you know, you never know what you’re going to get.  And it’s always-- it tends to be interesting and kind of gems that you wouldn’t find anywhere else.  I think that’s what’s unique and what keeps people coming back.

Question: Is it important for Digg users to interact offline?

Transcript:  Yeah, absolutely.  To bring people together and get them talking in-- outside of the online community is a big deal, and it’s something that we would like to continue to do.  It’s important for the company.  It’s important to get users some face time with you so they can give you-- and share their ideas, their feedback.  It’s so much better than just an email coming in.  Not only that, but I think it’s important as we kind of evolve our site as well.  You know, one of the things that we’ll be launching in the future is our story suggest feature.  And we call it our recommendation engine.  And it’s a piece of software that analyzes all of the digs that are happening in real time across the site.  And it compares you to other users.  So you may be dig number 3000 on this story but who are those other, you know, 2999 people, and what else are they finding that you might also find interesting.  So when we start to do these things we can surface stories very early on before they become popular, that we can kind of, in our own heads, hopefully predict that they will become very popular stories.  It’s kind of this weird game, this kind of-- we call it-- behind the scenes we call them like prescient users, like users that can predict the future, the tastemakers of news.  And it’s really interesting because as we start to surface these stories we also are finding like minded individuals.  And so in the future on Digg not only will we say okay, you know, we realize you’ve been digging stories about oolong tea in the R8 so here’s some awesome stories that you might find interesting, but, you know, here’s ten other users that you’re constantly agreeing with that you had no idea that you were agreeing with.  And so we’re going to start making those introductions.  And once we do that-- I mean we want to have meetups and get togethers and things where people can come out and say like hey, I really enjoyed that story that you submitted, and like make those connections, those real world connections.  So it’s pretty cool and it’s fun and hopefully we’ll have that feature out in a few months.

Question: Is this the death of newspapers?

Transcript:  I think that what it comes down to is the quality of content and who’s writing the articles.  I think that if Digg has done anything it’s really leveled the playing field for traditional media.  So, you know, a story can come from the New York Times or from somebody’s blog that they wrote out of their basement and receive the same amount of traffic, you know.  Which is insane, which just was impossible a few year’s ago.  I mean to think that there could be a story on the front page of the New York Times that doesn’t get as much traffic as someone’s blog that makes the front page of Digg, it just-- is crazy.  But it’s great because really what it’s doing is it’s saying it’s really not about the one destination so much as it is about the quality of the article and the story that’s being presented, right, and what people want to read.  So for us, you know, I’ve seen a lot of people in traditional media, writers, that have said, you know, my blog is now popular enough to where I’m receiving enough ad revenue where I can consider doing this full time, you know.  I can leave my 9 to 5 and say okay, this is my blog, this is who I am as a writer, and do that.  And there’s been several people, Malick, who wrote for business 2.0, left and started his own network of blog sites that are doing quite well.  And, you know, I think it just gives people more options in the future.  But I mean quality will always prevail and I think that there’s going to be a place and need for that and there’s going to be a need for people that do the deep dive when it comes to news, you know, the fact checking, the people that-- there’s still going to need to be teams around certain types of stories.  And that’s always going to survive.

Question: How do you ensure accuracy?

Transcript:  The deep dive is being defined slightly differently now than it was.  I mean when you think about the way that traditional newspapers would do that, they would have a team working on a story that would follow that story throughout its lifespan, right, and do the follow ups and the fact checking and all that.  Now all of these users that are, you know, editors on Digg, and by editors I mean registered users that submit stories, they’re the ones that are doing the fact checking.  I mean without a doubt we have stories every single day that are marked and flagged as inaccurate, you know.  There’ll be a story that’s submitted, hits the front page, and the users, they have different bury options, and if they go and they do the research and they check the different sites and then say okay, this doesn’t add up, they’ll submit it in the comments, they’ll oftentimes submit a follow up story, and they’ll flag the articles inaccurate, and they’ll say that right at the top of the article.  So that happens all the time.  But, you know, it really comes down to-- I mean I don’t think that’s going away.  I think it’s slightly evolving when it comes to Digg, but traditional websites, I’m sure, will still have that because they need that for their own kind of set of stories and their own personal site, their own branded site.  But for us it’s very much this living and breathing thing that happens on Digg where, you know, a story will come up and then there will be a rebuttal to that story that comes up, you know, a few hours later, and it’s constant news is just getting pushed down.  So it’s just the way that we do it.

Question: If you owned a traditional newspaper, what would you do?

 Transcript: In discussions that we have with traditional media, when they come in and they say okay, you know, oftentimes we’ll get phone calls and say hey, can you meet with us.  We just want to sit down and have a conversation about where things are headed.  And we sit down, they’ll say okay, you know, obviously you guys have just exploded on the scene and now you’re the, you know, second or third highest referral of traffic to our site, and we just want to know how can we work with you better.  And I think that one of the things Digg will do in the future is kind of refine some of these tools for these publisher sites and say okay, what type of information can we give them to make-- to really inform their writers and educate them about what the masses are wanting, and really shortening kind of the feedback loop, you know.  It’s really about the message that they’re getting from their readers in real time as opposed to, you know, printing something and just hoping people are going to like it, you know.  And those are tools that we’re working on and stuff that we’ll have out in the future.  Can’t really say a ton more about that, but it’s cool stuff.

Recorded on: 6/5/08