Digg Returns: Can Rose & Ohanian Beat Reddit?

Digg, the pioneering crowdsourced content platform known for popularizing 'upvoting,' has been relaunched by its original founder, Kevin Rose. Teaming up with Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, Rose aims to recapture the platform's former glory and challenge the dominance of Reddit, which benefited from Digg's past struggles. The beta version of the new Digg officially debuted to the public on Wednesday at Digg.com, inviting users to sign up.

Rose has articulated a vision for the relaunched Digg focused on rebuilding trust with its user base and implementing measures against AI bot manipulation. The platform has launched with 21 diverse communities, covering topics from science to entertainment, and was initially seeded with approximately 67,000 invited users. Future development will prioritize weekly feature releases based on user feedback and platform evolution.

Digg is also introducing an AI-generated daily podcast, 'Digg Daily,' to recap top stories, with plans to potentially incorporate human hosts based on user input. This relaunch follows Digg's tumultuous history, including a critical redesign in 2010 that led to a significant decline in popularity, and subsequent ownership changes before Rose and Ohanian announced their revival intentions last year.