Digg founder has mid-life crisis and haircut

DIGG FOUNDER Kevin Rose said that it was time that his website grew up and had a bit of meaning to the real world.

He said that Digg had to do better and said that it's time for the social news site that he founded in 2004 to expand beyond the geek set and get some real-world relevance.

Rose questioned why clicking on a button and making a number go up by one would be important to anyone. Why does it matter? he pontificated. We agree we don't see the point, either.

Rose made the sad confession that Digg only has slightly over three million registered user accounts, even if it gets 30 million hits a day. This confirms that the site reflects a tiny, vocal and obsessed subset of the Web.

This means that the site is biased in favour of Apple, Linux, Barack Obama, and stories about people shagging goats. Since there are a lot of people out there who are not interested in Apple, Obama and goat shagging it makes the site appear extremely dull.

Rose wants to make the service more relevant to the average user and has started to experiment with personalization and recommendation.

Introducing a "similar users" feature on the "upcoming" page of Digg increased friend adding fourfold and Digging by 40 percent.

Rose himself has been growing up a bit. He has had a haircut gone are the shaggy locks in favour of a buzzcut. Well that is Web 2.0 for you. µ

L'Inq
News.com