This Week in Review: Yahoo’s future with Marissa Mayer, and learning from Digg’s demise » Nieman Journalism Lab
Betaworks plans to incorporate Digg into its personalized news aggregator, News.me, in an effort to reinvent both products, according to Mathew Ingram of GigaOM. Betaworks CEO John Borthwick said his company plans to revert Digg to startup mode. If Betaworks succeeds in reinvigorating Digg, PandoDaily’s Erin Griffith noted that it could become the web’s first full turnaround story.
The main questions that emerged in the wake of the deal had to do with why Digg fell so far, and what other organizations could learn from its demise. Digg’s founder, Kevin Rose, argued that Digg failed because social media “grew up” as platforms like Facebook and Twitter did what Digg attempted to do, only better. Paul Tassi of Forbes disputed that idea, arguing that Reddit is filling the exact niche Digg had hoped to fill.
