The people who actually built the architecture of the digg we know and love (though some of us actually might dislike it some) were, uh, not me. I basically wrote some code, and wrote some more code, and basically shepherded the site into the top 500 or so sites in the world (Kevin mostly worked full time during the first year) so I did a lot more than coding – customer support, took Daniel Burka’s great design and actually made it work. etc. But when Jay joined, and the Series A happened, we hired 3 very smart people, who basically rebuilt every piece of the site I built (totally demolishing my ego in the process) and in essence they were the Lead Architects of the site. None of those people were named “Joe Stump.” Just to give credit where credit is due, their names are:

• Timeless (in more conventional circles, where he is unlikely to be found) his name is Tim Ellis. He was our dba and can be seen below
  
• Steve Williams

and

• Eli White

Why were none of these anointed as “Lead Architect?” – I’m going to hazard some guesses. Time was probably not all that interested (he is kind of weird). Steve was probably too old (not to do the job but to fit the hipster SF image). In fact anyone who knows him would say he’s definitely capable, and I’m of the opinion that he’s vastly more capable than Joe. Vastly. Also he doesn’t drink, so he didn’t meet the key “Kevin’s drinking buddy” criteria. Eli worked remotely for us at digg and that probably eliminated him from consideration – even if he does like his beer, he would have difficulty being a buddy from 2500 miles away (he’ll end up arguing with me about why that shouldn’t preclude him from consideration, and probably get me to agree). So Joe was probably given the title by default. Doesn’t make it any less meaningless.

And that’s the problem with titles. There’s a lot of considerations in building those org charts I’ve talked about in the past, but performance should be top of the list. When you give people empty titles, you may suddenly find yourself with an empty company.

I’ve been forgetting my digg disclaimer lately (does anyone who reads this blog not get it?), but for this one I’m going to post a new one. Eli works for me now, and I’m periodically going to post articles about “Joe Stump, Digg’s Lead Architect” because nothing motivates like a grudge. Eli will probably complain to me about “grudge” so I should say that that is my personal impression.

Update: In the comments, timeless wondered why I didn’t link to his blog. Frankly it was because I was writing this in a rush and forgot about it. Figured a picture was worth more than a little of my meager google juice. But I’ve added the link.

1. The Cult of Personality. It’s hard to summarize what his point is here, because it’s just completely unfocused. Something about “everything Kevin Rose touches turns to gold,” until Pownce. Which, uh, wasn’t ever true, except in the minds of the same twits that believe this article. And Pownce somehow proves that it wasn’t ever true, ever.
2. First Mover Advantage and Network Unportability. This can be summarized as “Twitter came first.” Doesn’t really work, because there are countless cases of “second-movers” winning. digg for example.
3. Evolution, not Revolution. Again this holds up digg as somehow revolutionary, and Pownce as just a small evolution over Twitter. Except that digg was really just an evolutionary step over sites that came before, like Kuro5hin and del.icio.us. Believe me, I was there.
4. Artificial Success. Here he says that the problem was that Kevin used digg to promote Pownce, and that that was somehow not right. He’s almost got it, but is also woefully wrong, since Kevin used the Screensavers (you know , that TV show) to promote digg.

The striking thing about this is the list of sponsors on the right side of the blog where this is posted. Making up stuff based on other made up stuff seems to be a thriving business.

Also please don’t take this as in any way an endorsement of Pownce, the site I still refer to as dontellowen.com. I’ll never use it or endorse it. But I try not to write really stupid shit about it, either.

On the rumor – I’m feeling a bit sorry for Michael Arrington this morning, as probably the main result of this is that his credibility takes a hit. Other that, it’s just another rumor,  perhaps a trial balloon, who knows… I’ve been hearing these things since May 2005.

Usual disclaimer.

One can only hope that Oliver Burkeman was an intern, or has already been let go for impersonating a journalist.

• Digg was founded in 2003. Wow. Digg needs that PR person now.
• Story got no traction on techmeme. Here, gone. The blogosphere’s interest in digg is at an all time low.

Anyway since I’ve left digg, greatly enhancing my ability to talk about the experience, I’ve decided to try an experiment. 3 years ago today, digg was just barely launched. What I thought I’d do is recreate that experience day by day on my blog here, starting with Dec. 2007 pretending to be Dec. 2004, proceeding up to my leaving digg in Oct. 2010 pretending to be Oct. 2007. I’ll use the tag “diggHistory” with all these, and I’m gonna try and modify the wordpress templates to display both dates.

We’ll see how it goes. I can’t promise to be prolific, but in a way that’s accurate too, since I was pretty damn busy.