[IgorPartola]

Digg was more of a news aggregator than “social media” which I see as user generated posts + profile interactions. As far as I remember Digg didn’t have followers or any major original content or influencers.

I do think you are right about the rest as it applies to Twitter and Facebook.

[Shog9]

Digg rather famously did have both followers and "influencers", though not in quite the same sense that those creatures are known today. Arguably its failure to limit the impact of both are what led to the forms we see today.

There's been an awful lot written about all of this over the years, much of it overly simplistic and some of it just straight-up wrong; we all want to believe that we're just plain smarter than the ancients, even when those ancients were us.

If you're interested in (ahem) digging into this, start by searching for things like "Digg voting network".

[bee_rider]

Social Media and News aggregation are not entirely different things, right? I mean, in the sense that News (and other link) Aggregation was one of the things that grew into Social Media. I think you are right to say it is more of an aggregation site, but also it’s worth nothing that in Digg’s heyday, Social Media was barely a thing.

Social networking was a thing. Social networking, link aggregation, discussion boards—it’s like pouring milk, hot sauce, and vodka into a vat to get Social Media.

[andrewinardeer]

MrBabyMan was a pre-influencer influencer.

I'm convinced he was paid to post stories to drive traffic to sites.

Of course I don't have evidence to support this. It was over 20 years ago.

[linker3000]

> As far as I remember Digg didn’t have followers or any major original content or influencers.

Yep, some personalities on Digg had their groupies and if they posted something, all their followers would vote it up the listing, in effect the post was influenced.

That's when I bailed because genuinely interesting stuff not posted by the 'right' people had no chance of exposure.