Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Digg to be combined with news briefing service


Digg has been bought by New York technology investment firm Betaworks, a move that marries the news-sharing website with a daily briefing service that sends users links to top stories shared on their social networks.


Betaworks bought Digg for just US$500,000, the BBC reported.

Founded in 2004, Digg allows users to collect and vote on news content. Then, the most prominent news is promoted to the top of the site's homepage. However, most of the time this was decided by a hundred so-called "power users," according to PC World. In early 2010, Digg's popularity fell due to the popularity of Facebook and Twitter, as users preferred reading articles shared by their friends.


Betaworks launched News.me in April 2011. The daily briefing service sends users links to top stories their friends share on Facebook and Twitter. News.me uses an iPad app, iPhone app and daily e-mail newsletter.

"Digg has always been a site built by the community, for the community," wrote Digg CEO Matt Williams on a post. "Betaworks is combining Digg with News.me. Digg will join a portfolio of products developed by Betaworks designed to improve the way people find and talk about the news," he added.

According to VentureBeat, Digg’s underlying technology wasn’t very valuable in comparison to what other news aggregation services were doing. Digg raised $45 million in funds from investors, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Betaworks CEO John Borthwick will become Digg's new chief.

Image: soshable.com    

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