Digg in the beginning : The first 10 stories

by Patrick Altoft on August 14, 2007 / 23 responses

In the early days Digg wasn’t quite the site it is today. Just like any new site there were very few users and the stories were selected by the developers rather than the community. In this post I looked back in the Digg archives using the Digg API and the story id parameter to find the first 10 stories ever to be submitted to Digg, the results may suprise you.

“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 first 10 stories

1. CherryOS delayed till Q1 of 2005

The first ever Digg story was CherryOS delayed till Q1 of 2005, it hit the homepage (obviously) and only ever received 35 Diggs and one comment. This was an anonymous submission, just like the second story.

Digg, ever mindful of history, have deleted this story from the site but Archive.org caught it.

2. Creative delares ‘war’ against the iPod

Again Digg deleted the second story about Creative delares ‘war’ against the iPod but Google has a copy (sort of) showing 18 Diggs. Note the spelling mistake in the title!

3. Rumors: Next iPod to have downloadable games

The third story to be submitted and the first that Digg kept is from kevinrose and was apparently made popular 73 days before it was submitted. The story was titled Rumors: Next iPod to have downloadable games and currently has over 1200 Diggs.

4. Torrent search engine

Next up was a blatant attempt by Kevin Rose to rank on Google for the term Torrent search engine which currently stands at over 330 Diggs.

5. Logitech Z-5300 5.1 Surround Speaker System

The fifth story was an interesting one. Kevin Rose was clearly short of cash and posted an affiliate link to Amazon for a Logitech Z-5300 5.1 Surround Speaker System. I bet even Kevin couldn’t get an affiliate link on the front page today.

6. Buy one get one free Jamba juice

Next up is another deleted story about how to Buy one get one free Jamba juice with 169 Diggs, luckily for Jamba Juice fans archive.org caught it and Google has data too.

7. Bens Bargains

Story number 7 was entitled Ben’s Bargains but it’s been deleted. You can see the problem here – it’s been merged into 2 other stories. Once again, archive.org has a copy showing 196 Diggs.

8. Cascading Style Cheatsheet

Showing the tech nature of Diggers the 8th story was a Cascading Style Cheatsheet which died at just 23 Diggs. Google has a cached link.

9. Blog Box Applications

Number nine is a story linking to Blog Box called Blog Box Applications which stuck at 24 Diggs and has been deleted from the site.

10. Missing tenth story

This is a bit of a mystery, story id 10 doesn’t seem to exist. Maybe it was spam?

Engadgets first Digg

Since I can’t find story ten here is a bonus, Engadgets first Digg homepage with Tomato Picking Robots in Space.

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Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Branded3, a Leeds SEO & Digital Agency specialising in SEO, Web Design, Development & Social Media.