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RethinkDigg.com

rethinkdigg.com

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Re: RethinkDigg.com

#21

Post by brackin »

uptown wrote: post #11

So what'd they buy? No team. Scrapped the old code. 500k for the name, and the ability to get a percentage of their old users to at least take a look when they launch?

The brand is worth a fair amount, beta works launching a new news site won't get much attention but "DIGG REBUILT AND RELAUNCHED" could get some international press and at least convince old users to have a look at the new site.

It's not that much of a loss for Betaworks considering if they do it right they'll start building a huge company if not they've lost $500k and may make a fair amount of that back from the traffic.

Re: RethinkDigg.com

#22

Post by chubot »

mcantelon wrote: post #19

>What they didn’t mention is that we’re rebuilding it from scratch. In six weeks. Famous last words. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html

Wasn't rebuilding it from scratch and not being able to go back what caused Digg to fall in the first place?

It's kind of rare that you see a company actually make that mistake now. But I guess Digg did.

Re: RethinkDigg.com

#23

Post by smacktoward »

uptown wrote: post #11

So what'd they buy? No team. Scrapped the old code. 500k for the name, and the ability to get a percentage of their old users to at least take a look when they launch?

They'll also get a modest press bump when they roll out the "new Digg," like AVOS did when they rolled out the "new Delicious." There'll be press interest in the potential revivial of a once-huge property that there wouldn't necessarily be if they launched under a completely new brand.

I dunno if that's worth $500K, $500K can buy a fair bit of PR, but it's something.

Re: RethinkDigg.com

#24

Post by SupermanScott »

laberge wrote: post #20
blu3jack wrote: post #2

Ironically, it was "rethinking digg" and "rebuilding it from scratch" that killed it in the first place.

Not really though, everyone knew that V4 was a terrible idea and they simply went forward without caring much for the community. I mean what kind of marketing research could you do to prove that using promoted stories is a good way to build a community?

"Promoted Stories" myth needs to end. It wasn't the case, there was a severe bug whereby a Regular Expression only matched RSS content. The Regular Expression acted as a gateway into the Popular Algorithm. I worked at Digg and I fixed that bug.

It wasn't noticed before launch because we echoed the v3 popular stories into the beta version of v4.

Digg was never paid for stories hitting the frontpage. And for all the flack it gets for this myth, it should have been.

Re: RethinkDigg.com

#25

Post by dylanz »

jedberg wrote: post #7

They're not off to a good start. I just spent 10 minutes filling out the text boxes on page two, and it just lost all of that info. I hope the site works better than the survey.

It seems to be a SurveyMonkey problem.

Re: RethinkDigg.com

#26

Post by soup10 »

uptown wrote: post #11

So what'd they buy? No team. Scrapped the old code. 500k for the name, and the ability to get a percentage of their old users to at least take a look when they launch?

Yep, (they paid a lot more than that) and it's probably worth it imo. Half the battle with web 2.0 sites is getting enough users to get the ball rolling. Digg already has that, and all they have to do is "reinvent" themselves with a great design and a focus on some set of users that aren't being well served by other community websites. Personally I'd try to target groups that reddit alienates.

Re: RethinkDigg.com

#27

Post by redidas »

mcantelon wrote: post #19

>What they didn’t mention is that we’re rebuilding it from scratch. In six weeks. Famous last words. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html

I'm interested and curious - anyone know of any other articles on this topic?

I feel like I've come across a couple "bad" implementations of some concept (as I see it anyways), and thought the best solution would be to start over and redo it.

Are there scenarios where starting from scratch is a good idea? How do you know?

(As an aside, I don't think starting from scratch will revive Digg. I think its time has passed...)

Re: RethinkDigg.com

#28

Post by smacktoward »

laberge wrote: post #20
blu3jack wrote: post #2

Ironically, it was "rethinking digg" and "rebuilding it from scratch" that killed it in the first place.

Not really though, everyone knew that V4 was a terrible idea and they simply went forward without caring much for the community. I mean what kind of marketing research could you do to prove that using promoted stories is a good way to build a community?

You can find a research firm to tell you anything you want. They may have to torture the numbers more in some scenarios than in others, but there's no shortage of people willing to take your money in exchange for telling you what you already want to hear.

Re: RethinkDigg.com

#29

Post by mikelbring »

So they have less than 2 weeks left, sounds like they waited till now to post this to insure they can hit that deadline. How much can they really change of the outlook now, based on the survey results?
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