New York technology development firm Betaworks has agreed to buy news-sharing website Digg, in an attempt to revive a company that was early to social media but outmaneuvered by rivals like Facebook Inc. FB -0.52% and Twitter Inc.
Under the deal, which Digg confirmed closed Thursday, Betaworks is buying the Digg brand, website and technology. The price was just $500,000, three people familiar with the matter said—a pittance for a company that raised $45 million from prominent investors including LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and Marc Andreessen.
Betaworks is acquiring a website that still has a well known brand and sizable audience of more than 7 million visitors per month as of May, according to comScore. The company intends to fold Digg into News.me Inc. a digital media startup that Betaworks launched in April 2011.
Andem
12:05 am on Jul 13, 2012 (gmt 0)
Wow. I had to blink twice when in saw the $500k figure.
The story of a web site and community which had so much potential and yet decided to ignore the wishes of their users who wanted a rollback.
I recall Kevin Rose claiming that rolling back to the previous version was impossible and that they would 'improve' on the disaster that they had created. In my world, we have backups of databases and code stored on servers, blu-ray discs and hard drives.
I would have personally raised the funds to purchase the site, the older versions of code and the membership just so that I could revert it back to what it was and bring back the original Digg.
I've never heard of news.me and to be honest, the site looks suspicious.
It really was a cool site back in the day.
incrediBILL
12:44 am on Jul 13, 2012 (gmt 0)
When something went to Digg's homepage it could really drive the traffic.
Had a blog post hit their front page once and about 20K visitors hit in a couple of hours.
Crazy.
Sad they were too greedy to sell it when it still had value, probably the VC's wanting to hold out for a big overvalued cash out and now they get squat.
LinkedIn paid between $3.75 million and $4 million for around 15 different Digg patents including the patent on “click a button to vote up a story.”
Classic example or patents being the last resort to extract money from a failing business.
Sgt_Kickaxe
8:28 am on Jul 13, 2012 (gmt 0)
Ignore the users at your own peril is the message here, I believe Technorati is in the same boat on that front as is Yahoo! ?
Anyway, I think even Google is feeling some of the pains that come with forcing your users into YOUR mold rather than letting them mold what you offer.
bhartzer
12:01 pm on Jul 13, 2012 (gmt 0)
It was actually more than $500k, was cash and equity according to TC.
seoskunk
10:05 pm on Jul 13, 2012 (gmt 0)
Wow thats amazingly low price. I guess there must be considerable overheads but still.
I am honestly shocked at such a low price maybe someone could explain why the company sold so low
jinxed
8:11 am on Jul 14, 2012 (gmt 0)
The 500k figure is inaccurate.
If it was, even *I* would have paid more!
Future
6:03 pm on Jul 16, 2012 (gmt 0)
The 500k figure is inaccurate.
If it was, even *I* would have paid more!
I agree to this
wolfadeus
2:40 pm on Jul 17, 2012 (gmt 0)
When did LinkedIn purchase the patents? Was this part of the general dissolution of Digg?
