infoTECH Feature

July 13, 2012

Betaworks Acquires Digg

The social bookmarking site Digg has been acquired for $500,000 by Betaworks (News - Alert). The company will acquire the Digg brand name, Digg itself and the Digg technology. The company's employees, however, are not part of the deal. Digg will be folded into News.me.

Although Digg in the past was considered one of the top social media websites, a major redesign in 2010 went over poorly with its users, causing most of the user base to jump ship to other sites like Reddit, Digg's main rival. At the same time, Facebook (News - Alert) and Twitter rose up to allow users to share interesting content they'd found around the Web.

Betaworks will also release a cloud-based version of the site to complement the News.me iPhone (News - Alert) and iPad applications. Digg will be combined with News.me

“Believe it or not, it's been seven years since Digg launched. To date, we've had over 350M Diggs, 28M Story Submissions and 40M Comments. We're extremely proud to have helped pioneer social voting on the web,” Digg CEO Matt Williams said in a blog post announcing the sale.

Founder Kevin Rose took the time to praise Betaworks CEO John. “I've always been a fan of John's product vision and the companies he builds, funds, and advises. John understands the real-time nature of the web and how to capture and surface trends as they occur. Given his experience with bit.ly, news.me, and Chartbeat I can't wait to see what he does with Digg.”

“Both Kevin and I would like to thank everyone who made Digg’s journey possible -- our amazing community, our talented employees who have developed the site over the past seven years, the many investors who believed in our vision including Greylock, Highland, and Andreessen Horowitz, and countless others who have supported us along the way,” Williams said.

After the acquisition is complete, Williams will join Andreessen Horowitz as Entrepreneur in Residence. Kevin Rose is slated to appear in a reality TV show dedicated to Silicon Valley entrepreneurs.

 

Want to learn more about the latest in communications and technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO West 2012, taking place Oct. 2-5, in Austin, TX. ITEXPO (News - Alert) offers an educational program to help corporate decision makers select the right IP-based voice, video, fax and unified communications solutions to improve their operations. It's also where service providers learn how to profitably roll out the services their subscribers are clamoring for – and where resellers can learn about new growth opportunities. For more information on registering for ITEXPO click here.

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Edited by Rachel Ramsey
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