The reboot of early-internet social news site Digg is underway. Original founder Kevin Rose and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian have launched an early-access community for some of the first people who signed up after last month’s announcement that the pair had bought Digg and planned to relaunch it as something new.
The early-access program is being called “Groundbreakers” and costs $5 to join — a one-time fee that Digg says is about keeping out bots versus making money. In fact, Digg says the proceeds will go to a nonprofit “we’ll choose together inside the community.”
People who join Groundbreakers will get access to “updates, mockups, and experiments” and a “front-row seat to how Digg is being rebuilt,” according to an email that went out Thursday morning. They’ll also get first dibs on usernames and a “Groundbreakers badge” on their profile to mark “those who built [Digg] from the beginning.”
Practically, the community experience is being run on Circle, a web-based community platform for creators. It’s not immediately clear how many people made it into the early-access program.
The signup process and the chat on Circle were initially a little slow and buggy Thursday morning. By the time this story was published, nearly 3,000 people had joined.