Digg is laying off 10 percent of its 75 person workforce. Chief executive Jay Adelson announced a “headcount reduction in certain areas” this morning on the company blog and gave the 10 percent estimate.
Last year, there were big rumors that Digg was looking to sell to either Google or Microsoft. With Adelson’s remarks about Microsoft, it’s tempting to wonder if that’s still a possibility, but Microsoft’s cuts, plus the fact that Digg is hiring its own sales team, makes such a move seem less likely. The situation might change if...
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Blogging company Six Apart has acquired micro-blogging startup Pownce for undisclosed financial terms — the Pownce service will shut down in two weeks.
The San Francisco startup was the brainchild of Digg founder Kevin Rose, Leah Culver and Daniel Burka (also a Digg employee). It’s a micro-blogging service kind of like Twitter, but it allowed users to share much more than brief messages, including embeddable photos, videos and mp3s. Despite those advantages, Pownce’s traffic stalled while Twitter’s skyrocketed, according to data...
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Google was in the due diligence stage of the deal, where they peer deep into Digg’s technology and financial statements. Most term sheets are non binding, so anything that gives the buyer pause can be used as an excuse to walk away - but generally the buyer already has a very good idea what they are getting well before the term sheet stage.
Two sources close to the companies suggested that some issue that came up during technical due diligence was to blame. One source said that the issue was more personality driven, and that Google...
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TechCrunch says Digg is now finally serious about selling itself and is gathering bids via Allen & Co. Microsoft, Google, and two media companies (CBS, News Corp.?) are said to be at the table.
The real news, though, is that Digg has apparently cut its price from the $300 million the company originally wanted. TechCrunch's Michael Arrington says Google will bid $200-$225 million and that Digg will likely accept this. Microsoft is expected to bid even less. 100M?
In an interview several weeks ago, Digg founder Kevin Rose told CNET...
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Apparently the self-proclaimed 'digital democracy' Digg.com has been caught red-handed artificially suppressing and censoring Ron Paul stories by expunging them from the website with just one bury, despite the fact that thousands of other Digg users are voting the stories up.
At exactly 43 votes the story received one bury for spam, and then it completely disappeared from the upcoming sidebar at Digg in its particular category. I ran a search for TechCrunch posts (newest via URL) on Digg to see whether it was there; nothing, clicked the...
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In case you forgot, Pownce is a Twitter clone whose added value is the resale of Amazon S3 space. I always wondered what the hype about Pownce was... Nevertheless, Pownce has started to hire people and is looking for office space.
A reliable source just confirmed the company’s plans, noting the company has hired Allen & Company, a tiny but influential private investment firm, to help broker a deal. The asking price is still $300 million, the source said.
This will come as no surprise. Rumors of a sale have been rampant for months, although until now we hear co-founder Jay Adelson has been trying to muster up interest in a sale. This is the first time Digg has hired a bank to shop the deal.
Just yesterday, Valleywag reported a rumor that News Corp. might be buying Digg and today, TechCrunch writes:
Digg users, including top contributors, are showing an increasing amount of frustration with the Digg community, and many are leaving. Conspiracy theories that Digg auto buries stories with certain topics or linking to certain sites only compounds the problem.
Michael Arrington notes that Digg users have become increasingly frustrated with the Digg communities and scandals. As far as I can tell, it’s a non-story in a slow news day...
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Snooping on user profiles isn't the only special privilege Facebook employees have. They also get to test the site's latest features. Like news feed voting. Above is a mockup of a news feed as a Facebooker would see it, based on real screenshots from an inside source.
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Digg is close to announcing its sale to a major media player for $300 million to $400 million, according to sources close to the company.
Digg recently inked a $100 million, multiyear ad deal with Microsoft. On those revenues alone, Digg's acquirers could easily justify a $300 million to $400 million purchase price; if Microsoft is paying about $30 million a year for Digg's banner-ad inventory, paying that price would mean a modest 10x to 13x multiple on revenues.
Two possibilities: The New York Times Co. and the Washington Post Co. Both...
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