Company behind bit.ly, news.me and some other popular services, BetaWorks has acquired the popular social networking website Digg. This deal costs $500,000 to Betaworks. Digg has more than 7 million monthly visitors and the cost is very low for this website. If we could remember, Google has tried to buy Digg for $200 million 4 years back.
Betawork also announced,
betaworks has acquired the core assets of Digg. Digg is one of the great internet brands, and it has meant a great deal to millions of users over the years. It was a pioneer in community-driven news.
We are turning Digg back into a startup. Low budget, small team, fast cycles.
How? We have spent the last 18 months building News.me as a mobile-first social news experience. The News.me team will take Digg back to its essence: the best place to find, read and share the stories the internet is talking about. Right now.
We are going to build Digg for 2012. More to come…
Williams, who was brought in nearly two years ago to replace founder Kevin Rose, is going to become an entrepreneur in residence at Andreessen Horowitz. In recent months, he has been working to sell the start-up, and had brokered a deal for its technology team with the Washington Post.
Betaworks is planning to redesign the digg from the ground. Betaworks says it will build Digg for 2012. None from existing Digg team will be there. Digg had good users base but it faded after Twitter and Facebook rise in market. It still has a sizable amount of users, but it’s really just a shadow of its former self today.
