Digg Rises from the Dead: Reddit Co-Founder Joins Comeback

Tech pioneers Kevin Rose and Alexis Ohanian have acquired Digg, the once-popular social news platform, with plans to bring it back.

Rose, who founded Digg in 2004, and Ohanian, who co-founded Reddit, are aiming to revive the site as a place for genuine online communities in an era of social media clutter and misinformation. Seeing Rose team up with Ohanian was not something we had on our Bingo card in 2025. Digg owned the internet back in the early 2000s, but a design change in 2010 drove its user base to Reddit instead.

Digg was once considered the “homepage of the internet,” allowing users to vote content up or down. However, after its peak of 40 million monthly visitors, it was sold in 2012, with parts of the company going to Betaworks and patents acquired by LinkedIn.

Rose and Ohanian plan to use AI to help moderators and users manage discussions while keeping human interaction at the core. The relaunch will prioritize community control, transparency, and user ownership. The platform will roll out invites in the coming weeks. Let’s see how this relaunch goes.

Justin Mezzell, a design leader with experience at Google, Facebook, Twitter, and PayPal, will serve as CEO. The Board of Directors includes Rose, Ohanian, Mezzell, and True Ventures Partner Tony Conrad.

Back in the day, Digg even tried to create a new RSS reader after Google Reader was axed. The site even had an iPhone app that no longer is operating.

Rose and his co-host Alex Albrecht will host a live episode of Diggnation on March 8, 2025, in Austin, TX, featuring Tim Ferriss as a guest. The podcast made its reboot in 2024 and was a mainstay on the internet back in the day, highlighting the top stories on Digg.