Why Digg would want to sell?

For years now, Digg.com has always been rumored to be up for sale. Not a single one of them were confirmed by Digg’s CEO Jay Adelson or its founder Kevin Rose. However, this week’s tip about the possible sale of Digg is most intriguing.

Twenty months ago, the price tag was just $30 Million and Yahoo was thought to be the buyer. This week, everybody’s been talking about it again and the price tag is already a whooping $300 Million.

Is Digg really up for sale? Looks like it. But why? Here’s my top 5 reasons why Digg wants an exit:

First, social news and voting is like so yesterday. Everybody’s doing it nowadays. Digg just popularized the idea but did not own it. Soon, it will become so common that every website and blog will have its own Digg-style system.
The copycats are diluting the innovativeness and thus the Digg brand as well. We don’t need Digg. There are many other Digg-clones we can get our Diggamogous traffic. Besides, it’s now way harder to game the Digg system.
Digg doesn’t really have a sound revenue model. Diggers are to clever to click on ads. They’re even smarter than just installing AdBlock. The advertising agreement with Microsoft was their last straw of good luck. If you see banner ads full of smilies, then you know that the ad inventory is way down the pits.
Digg is slowing down. It’s not growing as fast as it used to be. It even dropped to Rank #129 from #90 on Alexa. And to think, the geeks, bloggers and webmaster that uses Digg would prolly have the Alexa toolbar on their browsers.
Digg is losing the cool factor. Digg used to be uber-cool. Not anymore. Kevin Rose used to be the cool kid on the block. Not so much now. Way too many controversies have plagued the site and the association with Microsoft didn’t help either.

So, selling Digg now might be the best way out. But at $300 Million, I don’t think the big guys at the valley are ready to pony up that amount. And Digg has better hurry or else it might miss the money-train.

Abe Olandres

Abe is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of YugaTech with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry. He is one of the pioneers of blogging in the country and considered by many as the Father of Tech Blogging in the Philippines. He is also a technology consultant, a tech columnist with several national publications, resource speaker and mentor/advisor to several start-up companies.

https://www.yugatech.com

7 Comments

jay says:

17 years ago

^^ well said.. google has been doing that lately. that’s also the trends for some underdogs, to sell their site to the big fishes.
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Cheryl says:

17 years ago

I’m not sure. This days small companies are being acquired by bigger companies. I wouldn’t be surprised if Google bought Digg
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Jan Alvin says:

17 years ago

Based on the sudden price increase from $30M to a whooping $300M, it sounds suspicious to me. Maybe they’re just lobbying on the price to increase more. Its just my opinion as a Marketing Student…

One way of increasing price is to involve some prominent names in the industry lik Yahoo. If there is really a buyer, I think they should reconsider their desicion before making a move…
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Ligalig says:

17 years ago

There are many manipulations in digg. Some stories are not supposed to land on front page.
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Ordnacin says:

17 years ago

It was always on sale, only question is price… If $300M is true they should grab it then laugh all the way to the bank…
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Mike says:

17 years ago

If they could get $300 mil for it they should strongly consider selling now. There is sure to be a web 2.0 meltdown in the near future.
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