John Borthwick, the founder of Betaworks became CEO of one of the social media star – Digg. Betaworks is the company behind bit.ly, news.me and various other successful products. According to rumors, the deal cracked for some $5,00,000, but this is just not resistible as the website gets heavy traffic and could earn more than that just by selling ads in an year. Some sources revealed that the deal amount is significantly large inclusive of cash and equity, while other says that it is just not possible to acquire such social news site at highly discounted price of about $500k. No one could pinpoint the exact figures of acquisition.
The founder of Betaworks revealed that he would make digg a start-up with a low budget, new team and fast update cycles. No one from the team of Digg would move to Betaworks, the News.me team would handle the management of this social media site. We would get to see a new “cloud-based version of Digg” and this would complement News.me for promotion of iPhone and iPad applications.
Matt Williams, the founder of Digg was given several options for its acquisition, but no one could not live up to the reasons why Digg started eventually. The main aim was to deliver the best stuff on the web, wherein Betaworks planned to “build Digg for 2012 – a new and fresh start for the social media star”. The website was slowly being faded in the social networks with the 4.0 update, people have started moving to other social media platforms like twitter and Facebook.
“John understands the real-time nature of the Web and how to capture and surface trends as they occur,” Kevin Rose said. “Given his experience with bit.ly, news.me and Chartbeat, I can’t wait to see what he does with Digg.”
Earlier reports states that Google offered $200 Million to acquire Digg, but he walked away from this great deal. This could have been a game changer for the service’s investors. Digg earned $45 million from the Silicon Valley investors since its launch. The site still valued for $35 million after the shut down of $5 million Series D Round last year. Wonder how much he gained with the fraction of $45 million investment through this deal!
The downturn of Digg really amazed me and the world. Its value used to touch sky, but now everything is changed. Do you think the new Betaworks-led digg will also have a similar fate?
Digg- a pioneer in Internet brands, has lost its glory. Having been acquired now, will it live up to the expectations of its users? With a whole new team and a new vision lets keep our fingers crossed.