Digg is Back: Kevin Rose Bets on AI Aggregation

Digg Returns with a New AI-Focused Vision

After a failed relaunch attempt in January, Digg is making a comeback with a renewed approach. Initially reintroduced as a social news site inspired by Reddit, Digg had to shut down after just two months, falling victim to an invasion of AI bots that led to layoffs. However, as of Tuesday, Digg is back in operation.

Kevin Rose, one of the co-founders of Digg in 2004, announced on the homepage that Digg is transforming into an AI news aggregator, accessible via di.gg/ai. Rose, who now signs off as CEO, suggests that former CEO Justin Mezzell has left the company, although his LinkedIn profile has not yet been updated.

A New AI-Centric Approach

Kevin Rose explained that Digg is monitoring the activities of 1,000 influential figures in the AI field and ranking the stories they share based on their growing popularity. This group, called the Digg AI 1000, is drawn from the X social graph, which encompasses around 9 million follower relationships on X, illustrating the connections within the AI community. Among these 1,000 figures are notable names such as Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, and Fei-Fei Li, a professor of computer science at Stanford and known as the "godmother of AI."

Rose also shared on X that "bugs are to be expected" and that new topics will be added soon. The di.gg platform will serve as the base for AI publications until the team is ready to officially launch on digg.com.

Features of the New Digg Platform

The di.gg site features an interface with a search bar, a button to enable dark mode, and two main tabs: Stories and Rankings. In addition to the 1,000 influential voices, Digg also tracks politicians and companies involved in AI under the Rankings tab.

The Stories tab highlights the most viewed, liked, and commented posts on X, along with a "in case you missed it" section. The top stories of the day and those on the rise are displayed with engagement metrics sourced from X, as Rose demonstrated in a video shared on X.

By selecting a post, users can see the X post generating traffic, the original post, and user sentiment indicators. Engagement graphs show how members of the Digg AI 1000 interacted with the post, including views, comments, bookmarks, and reposts. The top-performing posts receive accolades such as "#1 liked" and "#1 engaged."

Privacy Policy and Data Collection

Digg's privacy policy states that, in addition to X data, the site collects information from GitHub, a code development platform. Digg also utilizes AI from services like xAI, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google Gemini to rank public accounts, summarize posts and articles, and generate topic tags.

These tools enable Digg to quantify user sentiment in percentages for its posts. Besides public data from X and GitHub, Digg may also collect information about visitors, such as IP addresses, as well as details about the browser and device used. Searches conducted on the site are also tracked.

Digg assures that it does not sell personal information and that the data collected is used solely to improve the site's functionality.