did you hear about Digg?

[IzzoNet]

Hey

i heard that Digg sold in a price of 500,000$.
it's a lot. but i thought the price would be higher than 500,000$.
let's not forget that Digg was among the first sites that offer bookmarketing service.

 

[That Guy]

But the number of people using it has fallen drastically.

They have also tried a re-launch with new design etc, but without much success I believe.

 

[Cromulent]

Yeah Digg was a big failure once they started screwing around with the formula that originally made them successful. I guess they learnt an important lesson in business though; if you have a successful formula don't go changing it.

 

[Steve2507]

I bet the really annoying thing is that they turned down $200 million from Google 4 years ago (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...g-offer-Google-200million-just-years-ago.html)

 

[ColourKraft]

500K seems ridiculously low, even with the drop in traffic, it's still one of the most trafficked sites, really surprised at that!

 

[10032012]

Since the redesign I removed digg from all my websites share buttons...

Google +1 is killing those sites off... although not of the same concept, every webmaster knows not only does it help share your website but helps a little in SEO also... Google plans to increase this effect once the numbers have increased.

This said, myspace (I know awful website that long died off) was purchased cheap by News Corp many moon ago. The hits and user base made it worth several fold what it sold for - and thats coming from someone who never really liked the simplicity of the site and the pathetic Tom back-story.

 

[10032012]

Hey

i heard that Digg sold in a price of 500,000$.
it's a lot. but i thought the price would be higher than 500,000$.
let's not forget that Digg was among the first sites that offer bookmarketing service.

Just to add... these online services are not like a traditional company.

Its all the current craze... they grow rapidly and virally; once the website begins to die its claim to fame isn't worth anything... Digg made the biggest mistake not only with the redesign but choosing not to change back in a couple of months to the old design - "back by popular demand, the old digg site" - people will be talking about it as a hot topic... no they kept with it.

Besides competition was building and they did little to protect their brand.

Its only the dead brand and website sold for $500,000

Their patents and staff were sold for $16 million - linkedin got the patents.

Its also a myth that Digg turned down 200 million dollars with the gutting fact it sold for just $500,000... it was Google who pulled out of the deal not Digg declining.

I think $16.5 million is a fair price for Digg. (They simply sold off assets before selling the left-overs) Anyone disagree?

 

[Dan_HiHosting]

You'd think they could have sold as a complete unit to the likes of Google for more though.

Perhaps they were too aggressive in their negotiation. I can imagine Google paying $20 million no problem, perhaps substantially more.

Although it doesn't sound like a yahoo jerry yang moment.

The value of these companies can be very fleeting. Sometimes a bit of humility can help. But then you can understand the owners not wanting to sell, or sell for less than they think they can get.

 

[10032012]

Dan why would Google want to buy digg, now it had created Google +1?

These giants generally buy up businesses to prevent competition or fill holes in creativity.

 

[John013]

Yea! I heard about Digg, it's a nice bookmarking site but this site has fallen now...

 

[trendmanpower]

Digg was number 1 social bookmarking site but now sold.

 

[Sam Tyler]

I think if Google actually make up to own the digg, then digg will be the most important bookmarking site for SEO, it will regain it's grandeur. We should think of digg, it have served positively for SEO for long.

 

[Glowbridge]

it's new to me? what is a digg? how to use it? or what it does? why is it that expensive?

It's not expensive. It's a pretty shockingly low figure for what was once the 4th (or 6th maybe?) most visited site on the internet.

It was social news. Anyone and everyone could submit a URL they thought was interesting and the community would 'Digg' it (Add a point). You end up with a set of URL's that the community has ranked from best to worst.

They *bleeped* it all up royally though with v4. They essentially took away the user submitted URL part, which was basically half the purpose of the site. Instead websites could have their own accounts and submit their own news stories directly via RSS. Users then just followed the news sources they liked... which is no different to an RSS news reader.

There was an exodus of users, where the top story on any given day used to have maybe 5,000-10,000 'Diggs' they were suddenly down to 300-500. It was a spectacular collapse.

Now it has essentially been asset stripped. It has a good domain name, a decent brand and is probably one of the most matured and stable social news code around.