How do we do this? Everything on Digg — from news to videos to images — is submitted by our community (that would be you). Once something is submitted, other people see it and Digg what they like best. If your submission rocks and receives enough Diggs, it is promoted to the front page for the millions of our visitors to see.

And it doesn’t stop there. Because Digg is all about sharing and discovery, there’s a conversation that happens around the content. We’re here to promote that conversation and provide tools for our community to discuss the topics that they’re passionate about. By looking at information through the lens of the collective community on Digg, you’ll always find something interesting and unique. We’re committed to giving every piece of content on the web an equal shot at being the next big thing.

History

Digg started out as an experiment in November 2004 by Kevin Rose, Owen Byrne, Ron Gorodetzky, and Jay Adelson. All except Owen Byrne currently play an active role in the management of the site.

“We started working on developing the site back in October 2004,” Kevin Rose told ZDNet. “We started toying around with the idea a couple of months prior to that, but it was early October when we actually started creating what would become the beta version of Digg. The site launched to the world on December 5, 2004.”

Kevin Rose’s friend David Prager (The Screen Savers, This Week in Tech) originally wanted to call the site “Diggnation”, but Kevin wanted a simpler name. He chose the name “Digg”, because users are able to “dig” stories, out of those submitted, up to the front page. The site was called “Digg” instead of “Dig” because the domain name “dig.com” was previously registered, by Walt Disney Internet Group. “Diggnation” would eventually be used as the title of Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht’s weekly podcast discussing popular stories from Digg.

The original design was free of advertisements, and was designed by Dan Ries. As Digg became more popular, Google AdSense was added to the website. In July 2005, the site was updated to “Version 2.0″. The new “version” featured a friends list, the ability to “digg” a story without being redirected to a “success” page, and a new interface designed by web design company Silverorange. The site developers have stated that in future versions a more minimalist design will likely be employed. On Monday June 26, 2006 version 3 of Digg was released with specific categories for Technology, Science, World & Business, Videos, Entertainment and Gaming as well as a View All section where all categories are merged.

Digg has grown large enough that submissions sometimes create a sudden increase of traffic to the “dugg” website. This is referred to by some Digg users as the “Digg effect” and by some others as the site being “dugg to death”. However, in many cases stories are linked simultaneously on several popular bookmarking sites. In such cases, the impact of the “digg effect” is difficult to isolate and assess. WordPress is especially known for its tendency to crash under the increased traffic.

On August 27, 2007, Digg altered its main interface, mostly in the profile area. The domain digg.com attracted at least 236 million visitors annually by 2008 according to a Compete.com survey.

Visit Digg

Users of Mixx can control a personalized blend of web content that includes text-based articles, images and videos. Mixx users can search and discover media relevant to their interests, and interact with friends and other Mixx users who share their common interests.

The content on Mixx comes from various online sources, such as news services and online publishers of media such as video, images, and various other content. Mixx users can submit items from any online source, including their own websites.

Mixx has received partnerships with a growing list of online publishing outlets including CNN.com, USA Today, Reuters, The Los Angeles Times and The Weather Channel.

Functionality

Mixx lets users generate their own unique mix of web-based media by creating their own personalized start page. By submitting, commenting on and voting for or against stories, photos and videos that they like or don’t like using a democratic voting method, Mixx users can influence the flow of incoming media and recommend relevant media to other users within specific categories like business, sports and health using either free-form or pre-determined meta tags to define items by subject matter or geography.

Mixx users can also follow other users with whom they share common interests, as well as create, join and invite other Mixx users to private groups to further share and discuss relevant items among peers.

Mixx functionality is primarily divided into three categories:

1. Personalization capabilities

• Start Page. Mixx allows you to specify the categories and topics that interest you. These categories and topics are added to Your Mixx page. Here, all of the items that match your categories or tags are displayed.
• Personal Profile. Mixx users can create their own user Profile, including the ability to choose or upload a photo or image to use as their personal Avatar.
• Customization. While navigating through Mixx, users can customize their Mixx experience by adding a category or topic to their Your Mixx start page.

2. Search and discover capabilities

• Search. The “What are you interested in?” feature lets users enter keywords that they choose to quickly search all of the text or news articles, videos and images on Mixx.
• Navigation. Mixx users navigate through Mixx by category or type of content. Within a category, they can shift focus between Stories, Photos and Videos.
• Popularity. The Popular tab in Mixx displays the items that are most popular among all Mixx users and across all categories for a specific day and time.
• Localization. The Local tab displays content associated with the zip code specified by the user during the registration process. Utilizing the Local Search feature lets users find content for other locations as well.

3. Sharing and networking capabilities

• Submitting content. Users can Submit a Link by entering the URL and content type of the item they want to share with the entire Mixx community or with a Private Group.
• Voting. Mixx allows users to democratically Vote for content that they like or against the content they do not like. Votes are applied within specific categories, meta tags and geographic locations to ensure that no single niche group overruns another.
• Commenting. Mixx users can join the discussion within the Mixx community or within Private Groups by adding a Comment to any item on Mixx. Nested comments and comment following allow for further comment organization and tracking.
• Kudos. Users are provided 5 Kudos per day to reward to other users making humorous or intelligent comments resulting in a Big Kudos badge for the best comment of the day.
• Private Groups. Users can share and discuss stories, photos and videos among a designated group of friends or colleagues by creating or joining Private Groups. Groups can be made publicly discoverable or remain hidden at the discretion of the Group Administrator.
• Mixx Friends. Users can add Mixx Friends to make it easy to Share, Invite, and View another person’s User Activity on Mixx. Mixx users can also exclude a specific user from viewing their own activity.

History

Mixx was started in 2007 by Recommended Reading, Inc. of McLean, Virginia. The private beta version of the site was launched on September 21, 2007, and the public beta of Mixx was introduced on October 10, 2007.

On October 8, 2007 Mixx announced the creation of content partnerships with USA Today, Reuters, The Weather Channel, Kaboose and uclick Comics. On December 12, 2007 Mixx and The Los Angeles Times announced the creation of a content partnership in which the daily newspaper took a minor stake in Mixx. On May 7, 2008 Mixx and CNN.com announced an alliance that added a “Mixx it” icon to the bottom of each CNN.com hosted story. While readers can still share a story to other online social news sites like Digg or Facebook, those options are hidden under the “Share” option, making Mixx a prominent option.

Created and developed by a team of industry veterans with deep Internet, news publishing and online content expertise including several former executives from leading companies including Yahoo!, USA Today and AOL, the company is led by CEO and founder Chris McGill.

The former head of strategy at USA TODAY, McGill previously served as the general manager of Yahoo! News where he oversaw the transformation of that site into the world’s largest online news outlet. McGill realized that people were becoming increasingly frustrated with surfing a myriad of web sites everyday to find the content that mattered to them. He determined in early 2007 that the time was ripe, and the tools available, to create a site that would make it easier for people with similar interests to discover the best the web has to offer—text, videos and photos. Thus, Mixx was born.

McGill quickly recruited top talent to form an executive team at Mixx that includes Kerry Pearce-Parkins, vice president of products and marketing, and formerly vice president of content at AOL; and Joe Dzikiewicz, Ph.D., Mixx’s CTO, who most recently served as a lead engineer and product innovator at AOL where he spent ten years building cutting edge web applications and technologies.

The board of directors and advisors includes Burl Osborne, publisher emeritus of The Dallas Morning News, and former chairman at The Associated Press; and David Mandelbrot, well-known Internet entrepreneur and the former vice president of Yahoo!’s Content Acquisition Program as well as vice president of Yahoo!’s media and entertainment group where he managed Yahoo!’s Movies, Games, Finance, News, Sports, TV, Health and Yahooligans! properties.

In June 2007, Mixx received initial funding from Intersouth Partners of Durham, North Carolina.