Digg v1: Betaworks Flushes Seven Years of Internet History Down the Toilet
blogs.sfweekly.com
blogs.sfweekly.com
What about my data from the old Digg?
We believe that users own their data. We’re working on a system that will extract all user data from the old Digg infrastructure. In August we’re launching an archive website for users of the old Digg to find, browse, and share a history of their submissions, diggs, and comments.
If you’d like to be notified when your data will be available, just enter your email address here[1]. Then stay tuned, and let us know if you have any questions.
I went to take a look sometime around 2010, and they had nothing of mine. No comments, no submissions, nothing. Probably there somewhere, but nowhere accessible to me.
I wouldn't hold my breath on getting anything back.
Not to mention, an archive website still doesn't help anyone following links that have been placed on the internet over the last decade.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:pmMowDa...
"According to Borthwick, it would have cost “hundreds of thousands per month” to keep the site running on its old platform. Even though the site was state-of-the-art just a few years ago, most of the infrastructure would be considered legacy technology by a modern startup."
That's why. SF Weekly, and the author Keith Plocek, obviously did not reach out to Betaworks before running this article.
Also, I think the old Digg demonstrated that it didn't really care much about the data anyway.
Take one guy and have him, at the very least, back port user accounts into the new system. There's absolutely no reason why you cannot write an ETL job once you have your new database structure ready to go. Sure its more work, but we're also talking about an Internet property that at one point was a goldmine.
And I love how they say: What would've been the harm in leaving those archives up? It's not that complicated.
Of course it's not complicated, it's actually fun! What can be better than starting a new project with importing old and unwanted records from a screwed up database?
They will also allow users to download data later: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4325004
As for historians, the content is still out there. Digg doesn't host content, it "hosts" links.
I feel like Digg should be charging to "turn this off" for blogs, or even on a per article basis. I don't mind sponsored stories making it into the mix, but this is another form of revenue that could be explored with more sites that have a metric ass-ton of traffic.
They can make a semi-curated and semi-data driven broadsheet on any topic. It's a beautiful interface for a V1 and I think if they use all of the data from bitly it could be powerful. They can get a grasp of how many people are actually clicking on links, how many social shares and upvotes there are.
Essentially a much better version of Flipboard that is data driven.
There's nothing wrong with making a version of Digg that embraces social elements but Digg 4 was not it. It was trying to turn Digg into a Twitter clone.
So it's basically a domain, page rank and traffic.
Digg v1 not redirecting and keeping old content is removing all of its presence on google. How much was the % of digg's traffic coming form google? I would say more than 50%.
They still have a few day until the next google dance, but they're basically screwed now.
"But it only takes a couple clicks to realize all of the archives are gone. All of them. All of the Ron Paul idolatry. All of the ASCII facepalms. All of the linkbait. Gone."
That should be the problem, but obviously that content won't be missed.
2. Wait for half the internet to write about it (with new links to digg.com)
3. Put back the old Digg content
4. Wait for half the internet to write about it (with new links to digg.com)
5. Nasdaq Listing/Internet domination???
This strategy should work for all social-media startups. No guarantee of profits though...
5. Profit [for the lawyers].
And not a single fk was given.