How to Download Digg Archives: Diggs, Comments and Links

How could you download your digg archives, to back up your diggs, submissions, comments and saved articles? In 2012, after Digg was sold and relaunched as a much simpler site, it offered a one-time archive tool for longtime users. This article explains how that tool worked, what has happened to Digg since, and how to keep your own link history safe today.

Quick answer: In 2012 Digg let former users request a download of their old diggs, submissions and comments by entering their username or email, then emailed a download link. The data could be imported into bookmarking services such as Pinboard. That 2012 archive tool is long gone, so if you didn’t save your data then, it can’t be recovered from Digg now.

Why Digg offered an archive download

Digg was one of the biggest social news sites of the 2000s. In July 2012 it was sold, and the new owners relaunched it as a single-page, editor-driven front page. Power users had thousands of diggs, submissions and comments built up over years, and they wanted a copy. It was another chapter in the incredible Digg story.

How to download Digg archives (the 2012 tool)

Digg made it easy for previous users to back up their archives and use them however they liked. You visited the Digg archive page and entered your Digg username or email address.

Digg then sent you an email with a long link to download your Digg database, including your diggs, submissions, comments and saved stories.

Importing Digg archives into bookmarking services

Once you downloaded the data, how could you keep using it? Digg partnered with two web services so you could import your data: Kippt and Pinboard.

Kippt was a free service to save links in a searchable, organized archive, while Pinboard was a paid personal web archive and bookmarking site that imported your Digg data for a one-time payment of $9.88 at the time. You could choose either, back up your Digg archives, restore them into one of these services and preserve your Digg history.

What happened to Digg after 2012

Digg went through several owners and versions after the 2012 sale. It launched Digg Reader in 2013 and closed it in 2018. In March 2025, original founder Kevin Rose and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian bought Digg back and began rebuilding it as a community site, and it has continued to change since then. Check Digg itself for what it offers today. None of the new versions bring back the old 2012 user archives.

How to back up your links and bookmarks today

The lesson from the Digg archives is simple: services change and close, so keep your own copy of anything you care about.

• Pinboard: still a paid, no-frills bookmarking service with optional archiving of saved pages.
• Raindrop.io: a bookmark manager with collections, tags and export options.
• Your browser: export your browser bookmarks to an HTML file now and then, and keep it with your other backups.
• Platform data exports: most social sites let you download your data from their account settings. Do it before a service changes or shuts down.

For more ways to save pages, read our guide to the fastest way to bookmark web pages and find them later.

FAQ

Can I still download my old Digg archives?

No. The archive tool was offered around the 2012 relaunch and is no longer available. Only data you saved back then still exists.

What was in a Digg archive download?

Your diggs, submissions, comments and saved articles from your old Digg account.

Where could you import Digg archives?

Digg partnered with Kippt and Pinboard to import the data as bookmarks.

Is Digg still around?

The Digg name and site still exist under new owners, but it is very different from the Digg of 2005 to 2012.