
For Sale: Used Social Voting Site, Asking Price $300 Million, Goes By The Name Of Digg - nickb
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/12/17/for-sale-used-social-voting-site-asking-price-300-million-goes-by-the-name-of-digg/
======
breily
That seems like a huge price to pay for digg - especially since I assume the
way to make money off social news sites is with ads, and the type of community
digg attracts is the type that blocks/ignores ads. Maybe I'm way
overestimating how many people use that, or maybe that's why they haven't been
bought yet?

~~~
bootload
_"... That seems like a huge price to pay for digg ..."_

Timing is everything. Given the current situ, digg may end up being a web2
wallflower as the capital to make such big purchases dry up.

~~~
breily
Exactly - given that any day some other site could become the top social news
site, it seems weird they would be trying to get such a large/unlikely amount.

------
kyro
Digg has so much room to expand, I'm not sure why they haven't done so. For
instance, users should be able to create 'sub-digg' pages for specific
subjects that they can then build a community around, or even embed into their
own sites, instead of using pligg, etc. By allowing niche communities to
develop, quality of news will increase, and digg can become a pretty reputable
and valuable source of news. Also, by catering to niches, users will see a
greater value in using and contributing to digg. I still see digg as a novelty
site which serves as a mere gateway for internet jokes and the typical anti-
cop/george bush/microsoft/etc. shit.

~~~
dcurtis
Interesting ideas, but once you start adding tons and tons of features that
look good on paper, the site starts to lose its community focus and you
alienate some people.

By nichifying digg, you'd convert one huge community in a ton of little ones.

Anyway, you can already kind of do this, by selecting specific categories and
viewing only stories sorted there.

~~~
kyro
Well, I'd rather be part of a bunch of smaller communities who share the same
interests as I do, tend to have more in depth knowledge than the whole
community about said subjects, and who care about the quality of submissions,
like here on news.yc. I find much more value in that. And I think news.yc is
evidence enough that social news sites run by niche communities can thrive and
prosper.

~~~
dcurtis
Yeah, but from the perspective of converting digg into a bunch of news.yc
communities surrounding other niches, I highly doubt that could ever happen.
And any attempt to do that would just ruin the digg community.

------
iamelgringo
Goes to show why you shouldn't take 11 million in funding when you're a social
news site. How much do you think Kevin's going to take home if they sell for
$10-20 million?

Maybe enough for a new pair of cargo pants and a latte.

------
downer
The price isn't the only thing that's high.

    
    
     Bill: Dude, are we better than Reddit?
      Ted: Like, yeah, man, totally.
     Bill: Dude, like how much better?
      Ted: Like a hundred times, bro!
     Bill: Then we should like sell it for... like... a hundred times as much!
      Ted: Whoah, do you have any idea how much weed that would buy?
     [They look at each other]
    
     Wyld Stallyns!

~~~
tocomment
Reddit got 18 million.

~~~
kn0thing
I heard they got around 200m...

~~~
icky
No way, dude...

If they got THAT much, they'd probably just sit around all day and spend all
their time on reddit... ;-)

(or news.yc...)

