Thursday, August 17, 2006
Valley Boys:
"...Digg's stature changed dramatically that day. It is now the 24th-most popular Web site in the U.S., nipping at the The New York Times' (No. 19) and easily beating Fox News (No. 62), according to industry tracker Alexa.com. More than 1 million people flock to Digg daily, reading, submitting, or 'digging' some 4,000 stories. As on many Web 2.0 sites, people register and create online profiles. Then these 'diggers' can upload links to stories and blogs they want to share from other news portals like Yahoo! (YHOO ) News or mainstream media sites like The Washington Post. Users can click a 'digg it' button that essentially casts a vote for the content. They can also hit the 'bury' button. The stories with the most 'diggs' zoom to the top of the page. Of the free labor that is the 'Digg Army,' 94% are male; more than half are IT types in their 20s and 30s making $75,000 or more. It's a demographic advertisers lust after.
COMMUNITY FIRST, ADS LATER
That's why some smart money is on Digg to become an ad magnet � la MySpace.com. (NWS ) Some even refer to Digg as the new New York Times. News sites are discovering they can benefit too: Get a story on Digg's front page, and in comes a flood of traffic from people clicking on the link to read the story on your site. Digg gets advertising via Federated Media, the company Silicon Valley veteran John Battelle created to pair Web sites with advertisers (Digg sparingly places ads in a narrow band at the top of the Web page). So far, Digg is breaking even on an estimated $3 million annually in revenues. Nonetheless, people in the know say Digg is easily worth $200 million.
It's not as dot-com déjà vu as it sounds. YouTube, the enormously popular video site, posts similarly fledgling revenues, but some experts say it could easily fetch $500 million. What's more, Digg registered users have been doubling every three months. As such, Digg is attempting to follow the path laid out by Google Inc (GOOG ). and now being adopted by many Web 2.0 companies: focus on building a user community, and the ads will follow. "It's one of those things where we know we could put crazy ads all over the site and clutter it up, but we don't want to do that," says Rose. "We have a clear path toward becoming a profitable company, and we're fully funded. We don't have to worry about it now, as long as we keep hitting our numbers."..."
"...Digg's stature changed dramatically that day. It is now the 24th-most popular Web site in the U.S., nipping at the The New York Times' (No. 19) and easily beating Fox News (No. 62), according to industry tracker Alexa.com. More than 1 million people flock to Digg daily, reading, submitting, or 'digging' some 4,000 stories. As on many Web 2.0 sites, people register and create online profiles. Then these 'diggers' can upload links to stories and blogs they want to share from other news portals like Yahoo! (YHOO ) News or mainstream media sites like The Washington Post. Users can click a 'digg it' button that essentially casts a vote for the content. They can also hit the 'bury' button. The stories with the most 'diggs' zoom to the top of the page. Of the free labor that is the 'Digg Army,' 94% are male; more than half are IT types in their 20s and 30s making $75,000 or more. It's a demographic advertisers lust after.
COMMUNITY FIRST, ADS LATER
That's why some smart money is on Digg to become an ad magnet � la MySpace.com. (NWS ) Some even refer to Digg as the new New York Times. News sites are discovering they can benefit too: Get a story on Digg's front page, and in comes a flood of traffic from people clicking on the link to read the story on your site. Digg gets advertising via Federated Media, the company Silicon Valley veteran John Battelle created to pair Web sites with advertisers (Digg sparingly places ads in a narrow band at the top of the Web page). So far, Digg is breaking even on an estimated $3 million annually in revenues. Nonetheless, people in the know say Digg is easily worth $200 million.
It's not as dot-com déjà vu as it sounds. YouTube, the enormously popular video site, posts similarly fledgling revenues, but some experts say it could easily fetch $500 million. What's more, Digg registered users have been doubling every three months. As such, Digg is attempting to follow the path laid out by Google Inc (GOOG ). and now being adopted by many Web 2.0 companies: focus on building a user community, and the ads will follow. "It's one of those things where we know we could put crazy ads all over the site and clutter it up, but we don't want to do that," says Rose. "We have a clear path toward becoming a profitable company, and we're fully funded. We don't have to worry about it now, as long as we keep hitting our numbers."..."
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