Digg is dead: lessons of a failed startup | Hacker News Reader

Digg is dead: lessons of a failed startup

qdork.com

4 pointsNemisis76544 comments

This article is full of nonsensical garbage (or, I've just had too much red wine tonight).

It mentions their VC funding, and specifically says "That’s $28.7 million that they will have to pay back." Venture Capital doesn't work that way. It's an investment not a loan. They don't have to pay anything back if the company does not succeed.

There is also the mention of businesses "only" needing a $5/month website. WTF is this guy talking about? You're not going to build a social news aggregation app like Digg on a $5/mo hosting plan.

The 'Wandering Aimlessly' paragraph also has some things that don't make sense. Many of the features Digg was adding were targeted towards commercial clients that wanted to get info on the stories they posted, or the stories other users submitted that linked to those corporate properties. IMO, this made sense as a strategy, as if successful Digg could have charged for access to this information because the users weren't going to pay for the service.

This guy has some interesting thoughts, but I'm not sure any of it is rooted in anything other than wild-ass speculation.

I agree. The entire time I skimmed over this article (a process of about 10 seconds), I was able to clearly determine that the author had no idea what they were talking about. Needless to say, his website isn't even ranked by Alexa, Compete, or Google because it's THAT low. That's a feat I haven't accomplished in several years. Aside from that, I'm unimpressed.

Plus he's using the default theme of wordpress.

Haven't really heard of the author. I think the author is just trying to predict the death of Digg and hopefully get some karma from it should it eventually happen.

Some of the valid points include the large amount of VC funding and staff. However Digg is trying. The fact they are even laying off staff means they know the money won't last forever. Features targeted toward commercial clients means they are trying to pivot. Is it too late? Who the hell knows.

Author points to their business plan when they started. Just because they didn't know how to monetize out the gate doesn't mean it is bad. You rarely know everything when you start. And exactly how is "getting bought up" a bad plan. It might be foolish to rely on it solely but it certainly can factor in marketing position and overall strategy.

-Jeff

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