[lethain]

In my role as unofficial, self-appointed late-stage Digg historian [0], it's my belief that Digg ultimately had to change as the Google SEO changes had fatally wounded its near-profitability. Further, as a VC funded company it made the inevitable (and I think best for everyone involved) decision to modernize in an attempt to be a member of the Facebook, Twitter cohort rather than experience a long-term shrinking into mediocrity.

[0]: https://lethain.com/digg-v4/

[sys_64738]

But did Digg serve its purpose for that period of the internet? That is, is it simply the case that Digg had limited shelf life and should have been left alone to die out naturally. If it was losing numbers then maybe the redesign or whatever it was accelerated its demise. Sometimes it's better to use the iPod effect as momentum to launch then next new thing (iPhone). That new thing is totally separate from the old thing (Digg).

[taurath]

If you take investor money and start to fail, you aren't gonna die out naturally, you'll be killed and drained of blood, or die attempting a triple pirouette off a 200 meter high dive into a kiddy pool.

[SpicyLemonZest]

That doesn't seem to have happened here. Digg isn't popular, and I'd definitely stipulate that it's lower quality, but it still exists and functions as a general interest content aggregator thing.

[war1025]

New Digg is a resurrection of old Digg by a completely different company. [1]

The Digg v4 thing was a very big deal back when it happened. In a matter of a month or two, Digg lost the majority of its traffic to Reddit. I personally remember switching pretty much overnight after v4 when beforehand I always thought Reddit was inferior to Digg.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digg#Sale_and_relaunch

Edit:

Found an old graph of the traffic dropoff when v4 launched [2]

[2] http://i.imgur.com/FuqV9.png

[marcinzm]

As I understand, Digg the original company was killed and drained of blood. The company that acquired the rights to digg.com as a result then re-launched it. The original Digg, the company, is long dead and buried.

[taurath]

Just because a website is up doesn't mean its relevant

[mooted1]

I think it's tempting to attribute to structure what can be better explained by accident.

You obviously have more context, but from my experience developing product, there are almost always ways to change direction incrementally and in a manner that allows you to get your toe wet to test the temperature, and not dive in unshielded.

Although I realize now you may be saying that change was inevitable, but catastrophe wasn't.

[random314]

Google Panda launched in 2011. Digg V4 launched in 2010. This seems to contradict the timeline in your post?