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Written on 3rd December 2008
0 COMMENTS 
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
Everything 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”.
Written on 26th July 2008
4 COMMENTS
Joop Dorresteijn, East Asia correspondent
A dispiriting update about Google wanting to acquire Digg, the deal is off! The guys at Digg were about to close the deal and walk away with 200 million dollars. But for some reason, Google decided to walk away from the deal yesterday, leaving Digg to be the ugly bride nobody wants to have.
The acquisition had passed the term sheet stage and entered final negociations this week. During these non-binding negotiations, Google had closer research into Digg’s technology and financial statement, the teams from both parties might not cooperate as expected before.
Could Google have a strategy by walking away? Or is there something fishy to Digg’s financial status or technology? Perhaps it’s the fact that Google News already makes $100 million revenue per year, and does not need Digg. As Valleywag reports, Digg would be inconsequential for Google’s traffic. Either way, Interest of other parties might be questionable after the turndown by Google. I’d say: Just sell the site to the first buyer Jay, while you still can!
Written on 23rd July 2008
5 COMMENTS
Joop Dorresteijn, East Asia correspondent
Google’s negotiations with Digg have become serious, and Techcrunch heard whispers at Google that the companies have signed a letter of intent and are expected to close the deal within a couple of weeks. With the acquirement, Digg will be brought under the Google News property. The acquisition price is in the $200 million range.
Democratic news website
Digg started as an experiment by Kevin Rose, Owen Byrne, Ron Gorodetzky, and Jay Adelson in the last quarter of 2004, and raised it’s initial funding of 2.8 million in the second quarter of 2005. When Yahoo bought Del.icio.us in 2005, many people expected Google to buy Digg. In contrary, it was Yahoo that was rumored to buy Digg in 2006. In 2008, Yahoo releases a Digg clone (one of many, including Netscape), while Jay Edelson denied talking to them in March, it seems that Google is seriously interested in the democratic news site. Currently, the domain digg is estimated to attract at least 239 million visitors per year.
4 reasons why the acquirement is good news
- 1. Google didn’t kill Youtube or Feedburner etc. Some say that Feedburner development has stalled, think again. With the acquirement by Google, Feedburner introduced advertisements and many other new features in the last year. Would you like to see Digg get bought by FOX or AOL?
- 2. New features that would be impossible before Why? Digg has expanded their categories, and included video and pictures over the years, but face it; Digg is a place for tech geeks. Also, the fact that Digg will fall under the Google News property is good news, since they might be able to bring Digg to the next level.
- 3. Keeping Google freshThe guys at Digg can bring some fresh wind into corporate Google, keeping the company close to the ground.
- 4. Search engine will work better The digg search engine has been getting better over the last year, but still it’s slow and unintuitive. I usually use Google to find the right stories on Digg. With the Google acquirement, we will see improved search on the site.
Digg is dead, long live Digg
Call me a romantic dreamer but but Digg lost its ‘zapp’ a long time ago, and it’s never coming back. The democratic system of Digg made it an excellent resource back in 2006/2007. With the good content, Digg attracted more users. With the bigger user group outside the early adapters, interests change. Now, Digg is an excellent resource for funny pictures and clips, but the site has lost initial flavor, with the acquirement, intentions will go even broader. Will the suggested stories be the last implemented functionality?
Written on 22nd February 2008
14 COMMENTS
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
Amsterdam (The Netherlands) will be buzzing on April 3, 2008 when Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht will present and record their famous Diggnation show during the third edition of The Next Web Conference.
Diggnation is the biggest weekly online TV show averaging 500.000 viewers per episode. It is highly popular and influential amongst internet professionals. This will be the first time that Diggnation will be recorded from the European mainland and The Next Web Conference is very proud to host this unique event.
Diggnation is breaking new grounds for web-based video and as a testament Virgin America has recently announced that they will include Diggnation in their entertainment systems. Diggnation has sprung out of Digg.com and discusses the most funny and bizarre news of the week on the web.
Diggnation is one of the shows of Revision3, founded by Kevin Rose, David Prager and Jay Adelson, is the internet TV leader for the next generation.
The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show off, the future of the Web. (More info 
