Digg sold for $500,000, worth $160m at peak

Digg, the once rising star of the social news industry has been sold for only $500,000. Betaworks, a New York based technology development company bought the website however according to breaking news on the Wall Street Journal, it will not be retaining any of the staff.

Digg was founded in 2004 and was at the forefront of the websites who allowed people to add and interact with content from other people. It was valued once at $160 million, but Facebook and Twitter hit it hard and the fortunes declined quickly over the years.

The Wall Street Journal added that Digg had actually received higher offers, but sold to Betaworks because they were ‘the best plan for reviving the brand'. John Borthwick, the founder of Betaworks will take over as the new Digg CEO.

Matt Williams, Digg's current chief executive said “Over the last few months, we've considered many options of where Digg could go and frankly many of them could not live up to the reason Digg was invented in the first place – to discover the best stuff on the web. We wanted to find a way to take Digg back to its startup roots.”

He continued “Coming soon, Betaworks will unveil a new cloud-based version of Digg to complement the current News.me iPhone and iPad apps. Stay tuned.”

Kitguru says: Such a shame to see this brand taken over, but perhaps a good sign for the future.

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