Kevin Rose: ‘Digg will soon start suggesting stories’
Written on April 3, 2008 – 12:47 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
If you came here from Digg it would be great if you could actually Digg us too! Do you have a start-up that we should write about? Contact us! Thanks for visiting and hope you come back again!
Kevin Rose is officiously one of the most famous Web 2.0 entrepreneurs. He has co-founded Revision3, Pownce, and of course his most popular company Digg. Somebody with such an entrepreneurial spirit certainly has something to tell, so we asked Scott Rafer - who also managed successful start-ups such as MyBlogLog - to interview Kevin on stage.
So the first question that comes to everybody’s mind is: how can you handle three start-ups at the same time? Rose: “It’s a matter of getting the right management in place”. For example, Kevin appointed Leah Culver as the lead developer of Pownce. She runs the show from day to day, while Kevin makes the strategic decisions.
Digg however, takes a lot of time. Kevin: “Digg is like my full-time job, the one I work on for 60 hours a week”. Moreover, the Digg-founder told that the company is large enough now - 55 employees - for things to happen on their own. He used to panic when the servers crashed, now he has a team to take care of a crisis like that.
Scott also asked Kevin some questions about the future of Digg. Kevin: “We have to fix the Upcoming section because it’s broken. Nobody can follow the 50,000 new stories users submit per day”. So how will Rose and his team do this? Well, they’re gonna follow the 3.0 trend by letting in the experts.
Kevin: “When you digg a story that already has 3,000 diggs, you have no idea who those other 2999 people are. What else are they digging?” So Digg will make connections and introduce you to other stories that might interest you. Some of them might not even be popular yet. They’ll make those connections by, amongst other things, following the so-called pressure users: the users that have an eye for good content. Based on their digg-behavior, the team can make better recommendations.
So ‘Digg suggests’ is an upcoming feature. If you can’t wait for that service to arrive, you might want to try the DiggSuggest web-app.
Email
Twitter
Facebook
Netlog
Linkedin
The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show of, the future of the Web. (
16 Responses to “Kevin Rose: ‘Digg will soon start suggesting stories’”
By Oliver Taco on Apr 3, 2008 | Reply
Ernst -
I think you mean “officially” but I kind of like “officiously” better in some ways! Kevin’s ramblings can get on my nerves sometimes….
I wonder how Digg plans to reconcile the bury brigades and back room dealers to a suggestion engine? Should be interesting to watch.
-OT
By logosamurai on Apr 3, 2008 | Reply
nice to know.
Thanks for the news.
By Tim Millwood on Apr 3, 2008 | Reply
I think Digg is great and Kevin seems like a great guy, would love that success. I think there is a lot Digg can do, and they need to get to work on it not to get dragged behind their rivals like MySpace got dragged behind Facebook.
By Tom on Apr 3, 2008 | Reply
Some people came all the way from Denmark to see those two guys!
http://www.campus.tv/index.php.....vieid=1177
By Z on Apr 3, 2008 | Reply
He said this a few weeks ago in a traditional tv interview.
By John on Apr 3, 2008 | Reply
Or you could use NewzNozzl ( http://www.newznozzl.com ) which has had “like-minded” for a while now - it finds stories based on matching how you vote vs how others vote…
By Pavana on Apr 4, 2008 | Reply
This is going to be a great feature. This will help to know more about an area of interest and also allow the like minded people to discuss and debate bringing out some great ideas and thoughts.
Good luck!
By daxsymbiont on Apr 4, 2008 | Reply
No, don’t be slashdot.
The ONLY thing that makes digg good is its democratic process.
It’s already bad as it is with the “top diggers” spamming the majority of stories.
If you wanna do something encourage ALL users to submit and discourage the “top diggers” spamming.
By Paul Hines on Apr 4, 2008 | Reply
This is very interesting indeed, can’t wait to hear about the meeting and I can’t wait for Mr. Rose’s next project as well. http://www.pghinestraverustravel.com
By Paul Hines on Apr 4, 2008 | Reply
Great information, I can’t wait to see what Mr. Rose comes up with next, the man is a genius in my book.