Digg sold for Peanuts

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   Will Apseposted 13 years ago

   Once valued at more than $160 million it is being sold for $500,000 apparently. At least $40 million dollars was invested in it.
   
   Scary stuff. No stability in the online world.

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   paradigmsearchposted 13 years ago

   WOW! That is surprising. The internet really is becoming more and more of a tough town.

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   Stacie Lposted 13 years ago

   They should have sold it while they were on top.
   Sounds a lot like the real estate market...sigh

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   WriteAngledposted 13 years ago

   Delighted to see at least one social networking site gone down the tube!

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   Arlene V. Pomaposted 13 years ago

   Yes, they should have sold it while they were on top, but what did they know?  Did anyone see the market dumping in 2008 and even back before that?  No, but isn't that what financial advisers are for?  People get so comfy when things are good.  But online is shaky ground--no matter what the times.  I compare it to watching the stock market, but this Digg deal certainly took a dump!  Is this the trend to come for online sites?  $500,000 is nothing!  Some people buy their homes for that price right now, and they get more for their money.

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   Pearldiverposted 13 years ago

   Sooooooooooooooooooo.... We (as writers) aren't the only ones that are worth so little in the world of International communication, intellect and peanut factors

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   Arlene V. Pomaposted 13 years ago

   Absolutely, Pearldiver!!!  A+++

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   jacharlessposted 13 years ago

   Digg saw it coming. Their concept was already out there when they launched.
   Del.icio.us, which was acquired by Yahoo one year post launch, existed prior to Digg.
   But, the pioneer of SBM was/is StumbleUpon, launching waaaay back in 2001.
   SU is still the top Social Bookmarking Site. The platform is brilliant, Paid Discovery outstanding and very  low on spam. Since cleaning house last year, and their internal Folksonomy, SU is doing even better. In fact, SU is probably the first generation hybrid Social Search Engine out there.
   
   Digg didn't make the revenue either, capping in at about 7 million in 7 years. Not a lot at all, given the volume of there members, links, etc. A definite sign was the changes in search results by the major engines. Digg, like Reddit, Mr Wong, and others got hammered, losing upwards of 80% of their link valuation/validation. Banner Ads can only get you so far. Faceplant is about to discover this too.
   
   Digg might have had a valuation of 150M but then again FB got a valuation of 100 Billion, with nothing but a photo sharing app {Instagram that they bought for 1 Billion two weeks before going public) and an Ad Campaign, fit for the likes of Wordpress users {chuckles}.
   
   James

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      Will Apseposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      I think it was the spam that killed Digg. SU and Reddit are fierce at keeping out the crap. HP should take note.

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   Greekgeekposted 13 years ago

   I'm always surprised when people find news like this surprising (see: Facebook's IPO fail... And people didn't see that coming? Really?!) I'm more surprised that StumbleUpon and Del.ici.ous still have some life in them.
   
   Digg's model was based on a particular phase of social communication on the web, and much like bbses and Del.ici.ous, it was only going to last as long as there wasn't another big, popular service out there catering to the social needs and uses of an ever-evolving web population AND performing the same basic services it did.
   
   The last time I was surprised by a big website falling from grace was geocities, but even that wasn't a total surprise, since it's been 15 years since anything Yahoo touched really thrived. It's really, really rare for large sites to remain popular for more than five years.
   
   Online communities  usually follow the same patterns as star formation: the big ones burn out quicker, collapsing in on themselves, while the smaller ones eventually atrophy, grow bloated, lose most of the userbase, and linger on as a small, dense core of diehard users who can last for huge spans of time if no one pulls tge plug (I'm looking st you, proboards and discussion forums and MUs of the mid-90s).

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      Lisa HWposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      I love the very appropriate star analogy, and Ive seldom been surprised when there's what is so often the inevitable "turn for the worse" that sites/companies take.
      
      I don't know if there's any other way/context in life (as the Internet) where there's such a population of people so ready to happily jump on and off bandwagons, with little thinking, little, planning, and little considering that what one is jumping on is, in fact, nothing more than the latest bandwagon.  It's a fairly rare bandwagon that can stand up under the weight of a bunch of people who do little to support the "overall ride" but "contribute" their own weight.

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      Will Apseposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      I can't see Reddit dying for a while. Once a really strong community has developed (and has the means to defend itself against spam) the addictive quality of social sites gives longevity.
      
      The surprising thing about Digg was how naively open they were to self serving users. How could they have squandered that opportunity?

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         Gordon Hamiltonposted 13 years agoin reply to this

         Came across this thread by accident. Sorry, Will, but when did the Reddit rules change? When did they begin permitting anyone capable of formulating a word of more than four letters, beginning with other than C or F, from joining their community?

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            Gordon Hamiltonposted 13 years agoin reply to this

            Sorry, missed a bit - or over the age of 14!

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               Will Apseposted 13 years agoin reply to this

               Do I detect somebody who was given short shrift by the little tikes of Reddit-land?

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         Greekgeekposted 13 years agoin reply to this

         You'll note I didn't mention Reddit -- I said that I was surprised that StumbleUpon and Del.ici.ous were lingering on.
         
         You're right in that Reddit has something they lack: a core community and a sense of shared community and identity. People call that site home, whereas they call Facebook and Google a service. A service may trump a "community/home" for the broader web population, but there isn't the same kind of loyalty, passion, or activity on a service, and it may more easily be superseded by a new service.
         
         The online fan forums where I was active in the 90s are STILL going, even though they're smaller communities. Livejournal lingers on, despite being bought out and changed up by the Powers that Be. Even more amazing, the text-based roleplaying game I joined in 1993 is still going, with some of the old core community members still there when I drop in once or twice a year to say hello. Friendships were made and the site became a home, so it doesn't matter that the web and technology and online gaming have completely changed.
         
         I think Reddit has some of that same staying power. It feels like a community to me, a throwback from the 90s web when people were drawn together by shared, obscure interests, participating on a site dedicated to that interest, rather than people being presences on the web united by a shared platform and service. It's a subtle distinction, but the identity and feeling of "this is my tribe" makes all the difference.

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