SS: Jay Adelson, welcome to HARDtalk. Digg goes back to 2004 – do you think it’s as fresh now as it was then or is the novelty beginning to wear off?
JA: It’s absolutely as fresh, and it’s getting fresher. We continue to grow. In the last few months we’ve gone from 35 to 39 million monthly visitors. I think that, like every website, the pressure is definitely on to continue to improve the site. We have some great things coming.
SS: I think it’s important for people around the world to understand the concept behind Digg – is it fair to say that you’re trying to tap into the wisdom of crowds?
JA: Yes. That certainly is an important way of looking at what Digg does. Digg really is about finding the most popular, hottest information and news on the web. It does it by bringing in the votes of people from round the world. We like to think of it as a collaborative filter.
SS: Your website says: ‘we are committed to give every piece of content on the web an equal shot at being the next big thing’. You make it sound simple and deeply egalitarian but it’s not quite as simple as that, is it?
JA: It is important for us to give every user who submits content to Digg their shot at getting to the top. There are some people who do a better job than others at finding good content. The important word for us is fairness and making sure that we apply a fair algorithm across the board.
SS: But you would not deny that there is a small core of super users who clearly wield a lot more influence on your site than the others?
JA: Well, if you look at our stories only about 10% that reach our homepage are submitted by top users. The nature of the algorithm and what we refer to as diversity ensures that is the case. Yes there are users who do a better job than others at discovering content but we do think that the system is fair and gives everyone a shot.
SS: What do you do when you discover manipulation?
JA: There are different ways people try to manipulate the system. People create fake accounts and try to Digg stories and there are certainly people who try to solicit Diggs. We have a number of different systems in place, in a way it’s an arms race between us and the abusers. We don’t want to tell anyone that they can’t Digg a story, but we also want to be able to recognise these forms of abuse, delete users when they’re fake and ignore Diggs when they are automated.
SS: There was a young Australian who was openly boasting in the press of his ability to manipulate votes and to guarantee companies who wanted to promote a particular website or a particular product. Have you been able to take on and beat people like him?
JA: Yes we have. They don’t have the ability that they claim. We have had many people out there who’ve made these claims and often do it to solicit money from others. It’s unfortunate but this will continue to happen as long as Digg has such an incredible affect of driving traffic to the sourced site. This is not to say that there aren’t things that a person can do to help a story get to the home page, there are lots of things that someone can do to help, but in general these claims are largely exaggerated.
SS: Why do I need Digg? What do you offer that nobody else can?
JA: Well Digg has a very real time view of any type of media content submitted. People often come to Digg because it changes, it’s very dynamic. There are other real time views of news and links on the web that happen very quickly – examples would be Twitter and Twitter derivatives. However what they lack is that collaborative filter, the 39 million people who sift through it and make sure that what reaches our homepage, and in particular the top of our category pages, is really what the public wants to see.
SS: You have scaled back your expansion plans. A while ago you were talking about doubling your staff, of going international in a big way. What now?
JA: That’s a great question. In September ‘08 we told everyone we were going to aggressively go international and double our staff. After the economic collapse we decided instead to focus on engagement, on procedures that would harbour our existing community into profitability in 2009. Then we will reengage internationally and grow our team. What’s next for Digg? Well I think the world has changed a lot in the last six months. What you’ll see is an entirely new version of our product that reflects the change in the social media landscape.
SS: Like so many of these very successful uses of Web 2.0 there doesn’t appear to be an obvious route to profit.
JA: Well, there may not appear to be, but there certainly is! We’ve had great success monetising our site to date just with traditional ads. Historically that’s been a great differentiator for us in the market.
SS: You talk about how it can be a great money spinner, are you making a profit?
JA: We’re not making a profit yet, but we will be this year. Furthermore we have a new product that we announced about a month ago called Digg Ads – a technology that allows a new type of ad to appear on Digg, which is Diggable. Our users want more engaging media so we created a product that was perfect for them because it’s performance based. The more they Digg the ads, the lower the cost per click. The less they Digg the ads, the higher and the better allocation of their spending budgets. We already have 13 of some of the most major brands excited about this product.
SS: Are you suggesting that Digg users spend their time voting on the quality of ads?
JA: These aren’t like a standard ad, these are actual content. A Digg Ad has real media associated with it, not just a commercial or a link to the brand manager’s homepage. We’ve tested this with the users and so far it’s done extremely well. They like this kind of ad significantly better than the distracting traditional billboard style ads.
SS: Is there a danger that the more you turn it into a corporate operation – the further you move from the original idea, which was community based – that you may lose a lot of your core users?
JA: Well so far we’re gaining, we’re not losing. We’ve always engaged with our users on these decisions and made sure that we weren’t in any way corrupting what was a community journalist site. Unlike a lot of other Web 2.0 businesses, we’ve always told our users that this has to sustain itself otherwise it will disappear. I feel very strongly that we have the right team and the right relationship with our community to make sure that we don’t become over-corporatised.
SS: Is Digg for sale?
JA: Digg is not for sale. Not only is it not for sale, but we’re extremely excited about the potential long term. We think that this is an independent international company, so watch our dust as they say!
SS: You have tens of thousands of stories every single day, what do you think defines a story that can get onto the front page?
JA: Something that’s new, something’s that’s unique and right now something that has sort of a techy edge to it. A lot of our Digging users today have a connection to our origins as a tech website. Also you have to be conscious of when you’re submitting content. What a lot of people disregard is that different people are using Digg at different times of day. So the international time zone component, as well as when news hits traditional media news stands versus when there are gaps in the traditional news cycle; that’s something you have to be aware of when you’re using the Digg system.
SS: Finally have you got a new ‘big idea’, something you want to do after Digg?
JA: All of my thoughts right now are on the big ideas happening here at Digg. I can’t even imagine anything outside of this company.
SS: Jay Adelson, thank you for being on HARDtalk.