Digg.com is still a relatively lesser known name among many people but is one name that is growing astronomically, especially in the United States and more recently India, where people live on the news provided on Digg.
Digg is a place for users to share content from anywhere on the web, be it one’s own blog or content from someone else. From the biggest online destinations to the most obscure blog, Digg users today share the most popular posts on the web and it has become a major single point to share content. Content gets popular, if more and more people likes it, and it gets more Dugg with increase of popularity.
Today, Digg is only 5 years old, and has a global traffic rank of 104, and is one of the top 50 visited sites in USA and many other countries.
Founded by Kevin Rose and launched in November 2004, Digg has grown to be one of the most popular sources of information on the Web. The team is led by CEO Jay Adelson, founder of the billion-dollar company Equinix (EQIX).
Following are the rank of Digg amongst all websites among few countries. 120 Alexa rank globally and 28 in USA:
Majority of Digg users come from the following countries:
- USA
- United Kingdom
- Australia
- India
- Mexico
From a business perspective, Digg shows us how business models can evolve over time and how companies can create a niche out of evolving needs of consumers. A company whose revenue model thrives solely by engaging the users to add content to its site, and increase its hits, Digg is one of the wonders of this e-business era. Thus, all the users, provide and manage content, and also vote (by Digging) which content they like better, and all this, the users do for FREE.
While this reminds us of Google and Wikipedia, whose success stories banked on the ability to manage and provide content to its users, Digg is unique. It actually helps to develop a taste of reading amongst its users as well. The user is guided on what is the hot topic that he should know about in the domain of technology, business, science , gaming, lifestyle, entertainment and sports.
Today, Digg is positioned to be another success story on whom case studies would be made by students of business management, as one of the wonders of the internet business models, who changed the dynamic of the game.
If you were Digg’s competitors, what would you do? Should companies like Wikipedia and Google look carefully at Digg’s business model?