It’s great news that Digg got venture funding: $2.8 million from Omidyar Network, Marc Andreessen, and Greylock partners. The wisdom-of-the-crowd news site is rivaling /. in buzz and traffic-spiking. They’ve redesigned smartly. And I’m a fan of their spin-off podcast, Diggnation (they’re soon to go to Japan to make a show). I told the Online News Association that they should have invited these guys to their confab to learn what the future of news is really about.
: And by the way, Digg cofounder Kevin Rose is a nice guy. I was supposed to meet up with him at Web 2.0 because I wanted to and because my son is a fan; he’s the one who turned me onto Digg (see Jake’s Diggs on his sidebar). My son couldn’t care less about any of the celebs I met during my career. He wanted me to meet Kevin and I blew it. So Kevin just sent Jake an autograph. Thanks, dude.
: While we’re digging, here’s one more relevant tidbit: The Diggnation guys said that as soon as iTunes started promoting vlogs, the video version of Diggnation immediately racked up more downloads than the audio version.
There is a ton of pent-up video demand out there online.
