Digg Actually Sold For $16 Million
Yesterday we reported that Digg had sold to Betaworks for just $500,000 and while that sales number may still be correct it only included the sale of the Digg.com domain, code, data and traffic.
A new report suggests that Digg.com raked in closer to $16 million with parts of the company being picked up by LinkedIn. It’s believed the social business network purchased various patents from Digg at a cost of $3.75 million to $4 million. Among the 15 different patents purchased was a patent to “click on a button to vote up a story.”
Digg.com was already a remnant of itself after V4 of the platform angered the sites most loyal users and led to a mass exodus towards Reddit and other social sharing websites. After the site’s traffic fell apart much of the Digg staff was scooped up in a power play by The Washington Post Company. After hiring Digg staff members in May the company placed the cost of acquisitions at nearly $12 million.
Digg.com will fold into Betaworks’ News.me service which is popular on the Apple iPad.
During its run as a popular news aggregation service Digg.com had taken in more than $45 million in investor funding. In 2008 some analysts placed the value of Digg in the vicinity of $150 million to $200 million despite revenues that were not yet covering the sites costs of operation.
Digg has fallen a long way from its upstart roots in 2004 when it became one of the first truly social websites on the web and the site serves as a constant reminder that big bets within the social media sector are not sure things in a volatile market where users often change allegiances in a very short period of time.
