Once Dominant Internet News Aggregator Digg sells for $500,000

Tweet Wall Street Journal - New York technology development firm Betaworks has agreed to buy news-sharing website Digg The price was only about $500,000, three people familiar with the matter said—a pittance for a company that raised $45 million from prominent investors including LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and Marc Andreessen. Betaworks is acquiring a website that still has a well known brand and sizable audience of more than 7 million visitors per month as of May, according to comScore.

None of Digg's remaining employees will join Betaworks as part of the acquisition. Chief Executive Matt Williams will join venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz as an entrepreneur-in-residence.

By the end of 2008, Digg was one of the most popular websites on the planet, boasting nearly 30 million monthly visitors, according to ComScore. But the audience started to drift away in early 2010 as services such as Facebook and Twitter exploded in popularity, as users preferred getting article recommendations from their friends or people they followed.

There were badly received redesigns and competitors like Reddit.

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