Once Valued At $164 Million – Digg Sells For $500k

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Founded in 2004, the news shares site, Digg, quickly became a media darling. At its peak, valued at $164 million. Eight years later it was sold at the fire-sale price of $500,000.

Yesterday it was announced Digg was purchased by New York tech company Betaworks. In an email the company said: “Digg will join a portfolio of products developed by Betaworks designed to improve the way people find and talk about the news.” What that means to me is, they bought a brand name real cheap, and they are not sure what to do with it.

digg-sold-betaworks-$500,000
Digg founder, Kevin Rose, on the cover of Business Week in 2006.

Digg has been in trouble for several years. It was not able to compete with Facebook or Twitter and not forgetting the new giant of news sharing, Reddit. It seems people preferred to receive pictures and news feeds from their friends on Facebook without sifting through Digg’s clunky set-up. For some reason, Reddit continues to grow, maybe because it is really easy to use and they allow users to be rude to each other.

In its heyday, webmasters were scared to death of the Digg-effect. Which meant, if one of their stories was featured on Digg’s front page, the response from Digg’s vast membership would crash their site. Not any more.

Digg has joined a list of internet start-ups that flamed brightly for a few years, then declined just as quickly. MySpace was bought by Rupert Murdoch, he totally screwed it up and lost his ass, which is OK. Who remembers Magellan, Infoseek and Snap et. al.? Who will be next?

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Jimmy James

Jimmy James dislikes politicians and thinks they should be ridiculed at every opportunity.
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Reply to  Jimmy James
11 years ago

No. It’s real, or it was anyway. It also makes sense because any sudden influx of traffic from anywhere could potentially overwhelm a server. I imagine the expression will live on.

Collin Hinds
11 years ago

Very interesting. I’ll never forget the times the flag was thrown in my direction for infractions I committed at Digg and Reddit on behalf of MMA.

Reply to  Collin Hinds
11 years ago

Yup. Same here Collin. They will ban subscribers over there simply because other people don’t like what is posted. These self-appointed spam police simply report you as a spammer and the Reddit mods ban you. In some cases they “shadow ban” meaning that even the member doesn’t know he is banned, at least not at first.

Admin
11 years ago

Digg has never done anything for MMA. Their rules were hard to follow and their arrogance has proven their undoing. I see Reddit taking a hard fall like this one of these days. While a good site many of their subscribers are pompous asses who set out to harm those they don’t like. Try posting some anti-Ron Paul stuff over there and see what happens.

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