Digg Clones: Pligg, Menéame and Where Social News Went
Back in 2006, digg clones were everywhere: hundreds of small news sites copied Digg’s “submit a story, let readers vote it up” formula, often built on free scripts like Pligg. This article looks back at that wave of Digg-style sites, explains what happened to Digg and the clone scripts, and shows where social news voting lives today.
Quick answer: Digg clones were community news sites that copied Digg’s submit-and-vote model, mostly built with free scripts such as Pligg (later renamed Kliqqi) or Menéame’s code. Almost all of them have closed, and the Pligg/Kliqqi project is discontinued. Today the same idea lives on in Reddit, Hacker News, Lobsters, Tildes, Lemmy and a relaunched Digg.
Table of Contents
What were digg clones?
When Digg released Digg v3 in 2006, it was one of the most popular sites on the web for finding stories that readers had “dugg” to the front page. But Digg was not alone. There were several hundred Digg-style sites, and bloggers kept long lists of them. Back then we followed these lists:
- 3spots kept probably the longest list, with over 250 Digg-style applications. It sorted them into Digg-style sites (submit, comment and vote or rate), Pligg or Menéame clones, and sites in other languages.
- Shii had another list of Digg clones, ranked by how many votes the most popular story on each site’s front page got.
- Mashable called these sites “memediggers”: sites that used explicit, human-powered voting to surface the most popular or interesting items.
- Impact Lab offered a shorter top 10 list of Digg clones.
Those lists are long gone, and so are most of the sites on them. We also collected the add-ons of that era in our complete Digg tools collection.
How people built their own Digg-style site
In 2006 you had a few easy ways to launch a Digg-style site:
- Crispy News let you start a Digg-style site quickly on their subdomain.
- Pligg was a free Web 2.0 content management system for hosting your own Digg-style site, with tags, plugins, templates, vote buttons, language options and user profiles with gravatars.
- Menéame, the Spanish social news site, released its own code, which powered many clones.
- Reblogger was another option for running your own voting site.
Pligg was later renamed Kliqqi, and that project is now discontinued; its official website is no longer available. Most small clone sites also faded as spam, vote rings and the move to Facebook and Twitter took away their audience.
What happened to Digg
Digg itself had a rough ride. The Digg v4 redesign in 2010 was full of bugs and drove many users to Reddit. In July 2012 the Digg brand, website and technology were sold to Betaworks for about $500,000 (you can read the full Digg story from 2005 to 2012). In March 2025 founder Kevin Rose and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian bought Digg back. A public beta opened in January 2026 and was closed again in March 2026 for a “hard reset”, and Digg relaunched in May 2026 as an AI-assisted news aggregator.
Digg clones today: where social news voting lives now
If you liked the idea behind digg clones, these community voting sites carry it on:
- Reddit: the biggest submit-and-vote community, split into topic subreddits.
- Hacker News: a simple, long-running voting site for tech and startup news.
- Lobsters: an invite-only, computing-focused link site with tags.
- Tildes: a non-profit discussion site that focuses on thoughtful comments.
- Lemmy: open-source, federated link aggregator software, so anyone can run their own community.
- Menéame: the Spanish social news site that inspired many clones.
- Digg: the original, now relaunched under its founder.
Want to run your own voting community?
Instead of an old Digg clone script, use maintained software. Lemmy is the closest modern match, because it was built as an open-source link aggregator with voting and communities. Whatever you choose, plan for moderation and spam control from day one, because that is what killed many of the old clones. If your goal is simply to get traffic from social news, read our guide to getting Slashdotted and surviving the traffic spike.
FAQ
What is a Digg clone?
A Digg clone is a website that copies Digg’s model: users submit links, other users vote, and the most popular stories rise to the front page.
Is Pligg still available?
No. Pligg was renamed Kliqqi, and the Kliqqi project has been discontinued. Its official website is no longer available, so it is not a safe choice for a new site.
Is Digg still around?
Yes. Kevin Rose and Alexis Ohanian bought Digg back in 2025, and after a reset in early 2026 it relaunched in May 2026 as an AI-assisted news aggregator.
What is the best Digg alternative today?
Reddit is the largest, Hacker News and Lobsters are best for tech news, and Lemmy is the best choice if you want to run your own open-source voting community.
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Another interesting Digg clone in Spanish is “Awebados.com”
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The best digg clone in spanish is http://tulinq.com
Here’s also another one powered by Pligg but is focused on a certain niche: http://earnersclub.net/
There can be only on list of digg clone sites. And that must be made as a digg clone site; Here it is : https://www.buydomains.com/lander/clonesattack.com?domain=clonesattack.com&utm_source=clonesattack.com&utm_medium=click&utm_campaign=TDFS-OO-BDLander_Invisible&traffic_id=TDFS-OO-BDLander_Invisible&traffic_type=tdfs&redirect=ono-redirect
Faves.com is the best one!
This list surely need update, a new cool memediggers has arrived!
Inmymemo is a new social obituary aggregator, powered by Pligg. Take a look!
hey, thx for info
Peruzz.com is a new Pligg-based Digg “clone”