Portrait of a Digg user

In December 2004, a social news website was formed that would allow people to discover and share content from anywhere online by submitting links and stories. Popular stories could be voted for and commented on and likewise. Thus Digg was born...and now, is the template for every story-submitting social site on the web.

From its humble beginnings, starting with a team of three with a vision of a new way to surface news, Digg has grown to having more than 80 employees and over 40 million monthly visitors.

Along the way, Digg has grown and changed; features were added such as Digg Ads and Digg Toolbar and applications such as Digg Podcasts and Digg Spy were laid to rest as they became less used by the increased Digg user base.

Today, the company also aims to expand internationally, offering its service in other languages and improve its analytics tools for publishers. In addition, Digg wants to further strengthen its advertising services to boost that revenue stream.

Defying rumours a year ago that the site was in trouble after traffic flat-lined and a Google acquisition fell through, it has since rediscovered its groove to the tune of $28.7 million.

As it's popularity grows (from 22.8 million U.S. visitors in August 2008 to 43.8 million in August 2009), many wonder whether the traffic could again stagnate like it did momentarily in 2007, or whether the team behind Digg are working towards another acquisition deal.

Digg's success

So who is responsible for Digg's success? Sure, you could look at creator Kevin Rose and his team, but like all social sites, its popularity comes from its users. So who powers Digg and what interests them?

Well, according to research, they are predominantly American men (though India and Europe are also users), mostly between the age of 25-44. They're also well educated and often in decent jobs, and they don't like to be screwed with (see the Digg DRM Revolt).

Many users have an IT background, even those that don't are familiar with the online world; from the latest iPhone apps to the latest viral trends. They are also fairly liberal in their opinions, diverse in their humour and protective of their interests be it music, gaming or movies.

The success of Digg has seen a multitude of pretenders hoping to overtake them. Many have failed, others such as Mixx and Propeller are hanging in there. Yahoo's launch of it's social news site, called Buzz, has turned up the competitive heat in this space but has yet to really give Digg something to worry about.

As it's a news-submission site the range of interests is vast, but there is common ground - Linux is the superior operating system, Glenn Beck's sanity is questionable and Megan Fox was the only good thing in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen...

The future

So what will the next five years bring for Digg? We can but speculate. Certainly more categories and granular topics (for example love tea, and robots). The possibility Digg users becoming administrators of these new categories? Increased advertising engagement via Digg's new API roll-out, encouraging third party developers to get involved with Digg in the same way they did with the Apple iPhone?

Digg has shown that it can roll with the punches and constantly adjust to it's user demands so whatever comes along in the next five years you can expect Digg to meet it head on.

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