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I Know Why Digg Hasn't Sold Until Now
So the chatter last night is about whether Digg will sell soon. Valleywag calls it a rumor, Techcrunch says they should just sell, and the good Doctor yawns. I believe that Digg will sell soon because they have reached their goal.
What was their goal? I believe their goal was to get their other businesses "set up" for the future expansion. Jay and Kevin rode Digg to get Revision3 to some small mainstream appeal. Then there is Pownce, the app that had great potential but the valley and Rose couldn't push it to the front. Their API launched and a day later no one was talking about Pownce again.
Why do I believe this about Revision3? Simple - whenever Jay speaks these days, he's Jay the Revision3 man, not the Digg/Revision3 man or the Digg man. So success has been reached. Jay knows that the real money is in online video.
Let's sum this up -- Digg hasn't sold because they needed Digg to help push their other properties. That has happened and now it's time to move on to their new projects. And now Digg can be sold.
The real question is whether anyone will care about Digg once it's sold - if we see bgates as the head digger, will people flock to the story as they do when krose diggs it?
Great point -- they use DIGG as a platform to launch other i-properties and once those hit critical mass, they sell the DIGG platform and use the other properties as new launching pads...
David
The Creative Connector
You might well be right but does anyone care about Revision3? Without the warm glow from Digg would anyone even have heard of it?
Revision3 is good, but I am not sure the founders think it is more worth their efforts than Digg, probably more where their interests lie?
Yea - I agree, no one knows Rev3 in general but from what I get from Jay's speaking, that's the place they want to grow.
Digg is a cyclical business - once the youngsters who take care of Digg get older, will the next gen want to take care of Digg? Doubt it.
Alan,
I think you can expand the definition of "set up" to also mean that they're being patient until the right offer emerges. Given Digg's traffic growth over the past year and high-profile brand, it's ripe for the picking. The M&A market is hot so Digg is in the driver's seat.
mark
I the question is what happens to diggnation when digg sells?
anything that contains the word digg is going to cause them problems. How ironic would it be if they had to change the name...