YiGG

YiGG was a German-language social news community founded on 1 January 2006 by Enrico Kern and Christian Volmering. It was functionally and structurally modelled on the American service Digg, and its logo was a hamster that the community nicknamed "Marvin". The platform replaced the founders' five-year-old news portal Th!nkNerd. Initially the founders even called it Digg and operated it under the domain digg.de; the name was changed to YiGG for legal reasons. In early 2007 Michael Reuter and Lawrence Nell joined the team, and in 2007 Jobpilot founder Roland Metzger invested financially in the operating company. After registration (minimum age 18), users known as "Yiggers" could read and rate news, upload their own news, or point to links from external news sources. News covered text, audio, image and video media. Content was rated on a grassroots-democratic basis through an internal scoring system: points were awarded directly through click-rating and commenting and indirectly through the reception of content. The resulting popularity hierarchy set the agenda for YiGG's front page. New entries entered the interactive offering via a waiting list and were either voted up by users or deleted after at most 24 hours. In principle YiGG worked as a news collection exchange constantly updated by its users. Registration committed users to YiGG's internal code of conduct. There was no pre-publication content control; YiGG distanced itself in its terms of use from the content of external links and from monitoring any copyright. The only control was thus the registered users and their usage behaviour, although YiGG reserved the right to impose sanctions for violations. In September 2008 YiGG reported 30,000 registered users and a reach of 162,760 unique users generating 505,142 page impressions (IVW May 2010). In early March 2014 the operators shut YiGG down for lack of success and took the site offline, then put it back online in July 2014. The platform repositioned itself as a magazine for viral content. Since March 2017 yigg.de has been offline.

YiGG was founded on 1 January 2006 by Enrico Kern and Christian Volmering as a German-language social news community. It replaced the founders' five-year-old news portal Th!nkNerd. Functionally and structurally it was modelled on the American service Digg; initially the founders even called it Digg and operated it under the domain digg.de. The name was changed to YiGG for legal reasons. The logo was a hamster that the community nicknamed "Marvin". In early 2007 Michael Reuter and Lawrence Nell joined the team, and in 2007 Jobpilot founder Roland Metzger invested financially in the operating company. After registration (minimum age 18), users known as "Yiggers" could read and rate news, upload their own news, or point to links from external news sources. News covered text, audio, image and video media. Content was rated on a grassroots-democratic basis through an internal scoring system: points were awarded directly through click-rating and commenting and indirectly through the reception of content. The resulting popularity hierarchy set the agenda for YiGG's front page. New entries entered the interactive offering via a waiting list and were either voted up by users or deleted after at most 24 hours. In principle YiGG worked as a news collection exchange constantly updated by its users. Registration committed users to YiGG's internal code of conduct. There was no pre-publication content control; YiGG distanced itself in its terms of use from the content of external links and from monitoring any copyright. The only control was thus the registered users and their usage behaviour, although YiGG reserved the right to impose sanctions for violations. In September 2008 YiGG reported 30,000 registered users and a reach of 162,760 unique users generating 505,142 page impressions (IVW May 2010). In early March 2014 the operators shut YiGG down for lack of success and took the site offline, then put it back online in July 2014. The platform repositioned itself as a magazine for viral content. Since March 2017 yigg.de has been offline.

• YiGG founded by Enrico Kern and Christian Volmering.

• Michael Reuter and Lawrence Nell join the team; Roland Metzger invests.

• YiGG reports 30,000 registered users.

• YiGG shut down and taken offline.

• YiGG put back online, repositioned as viral content magazine.

• yigg.de goes offline permanently.

German-language social news community modelled on Digg, later repositioned as a magazine for viral content.

• YiGG social news platform

  German-language social news community where users could submit, rate and discuss news links.

1. 1YiGG on Wikipedia (German)de.wikipedia.org
2. 2YiGG on Wikidatawikidata.org