This article was published on December 3, 2008

Digg: Not for Sale & Adding 15 to 20 new features


Digg: Not for Sale & Adding 15 to 20 new features

Ernst-Jan, Kevin Rose (unemployed) & BorisEverything is for sale if you pay the right price, right? Well, not Digg according to Jay Adelson who spoke with BusinessWeek recently. Digg’s new focus lies on becoming profitable as soon as possible. That of course is the right thing to say if you want to be bought.

On the other hand; Digg has reportedly been shopping itself around for years and rumors regularly surfaced about an impending sale. That sale never materialized and it could just be that Digg is running out of potential buyers. With the current state of the economy it makes a lot of sense to focus on revenues instead of an exit. Because it is common sense AND makes you more interesting for potential buyers.

Here are some of the new features Digg wants to add to increase traffic and revenue:

  • sell ads on its RSS feeds
  • keep costs reasonable
  • focus more on the top-line revenue
  • increase engagement on the site (by introducing new features)
  • make Digg more social
  • a revamped version of its search engine to offer more relevant search advertisements.
  • International expansion by acquiring local Digg clones

Jay mentions there is “probably a list of 15 to 20 things we want to do” in the following year. All to increase user interaction and thereby pageviews and revenue.

According to Businessweek, in September, Jay said it had tripled revenues over the last year. In 2009, Adelson expects “another tripling if not more.” Earlier this year, Adelson wanted to reach profitability within two years. Now, he says, “it will hopefully happen within a year”.

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