By Nitasha Tiku and Kelly Faircloth 7/12/12 6:35pm

Can You Digg It?

Could this be our last chance to use this wonderful image?

Betaworks Acquires Digg, John Borthwick Promises, ‘We Are Reverting Digg to a Startup’

Just a couple of months after the Washington Post poached most of its staff, Digg proper–the “core assets,” anyway–finally has a fate: It’s been purchased by New York’s own Betaworks, to be combined with News.me.

As for what to expect: Betaworks CEO John Borthwick told Betabeat by email, “We are reverting digg to a startup, expect more things like paperboy,” a feature that lets you automatically update whenever you leave your house.

As for the price tag, well, that’s a little unclear. Mr. Borthwick refused to comment. However, someone with knowledge of the deal told Betabeat said that ballpark number of $500,000 had been floating around and that was the only figure the source had heard. That’s a long way from the $200 million Google is rumored to have once offered for the service, before an acquisition fell through. Read More

By Jessica Roy 3/14/12 2:05pm

Exit This Way

kevinrose

Digg Founder Kevin Rose Shutters Oink Four Months After Launch

Milk Inc., Digg founder Kevin Rose’s new app shop, announced today that it was shutting down its first app project, Oink. The iPhone app was meant as a servicey rating tool, where users could highlight and rate specific aspects of a restaurant or bar, like meals or drinks. It saw fast growth upon release in November 2011, but apparently very little after the initial excitement died down. Read More

By Nitasha Tiku 8/23/11 9:06am

The Third Degree

dailydot

Do Reddit, 4Chan, and Digg Need Their Own Hometown Newspaper? The Daily Dot Hopes So.

The idea behind The Daily Dot, a new website that just emerged from invite-only private beta today, sounds like a great premise for an infographic. “Day-to-day coverage will focus on ‘neighborhoods.’ Sites like Reddit, like Digg and like Etsy are really like cities. And the web is like a large country of itself,” founding editor Owen Thomas told his former colleagues at VentureBeat. It’s easy enough to picture an illustrator going to town with a map of the internet and Etsy’s cutesy, cuddly cul-de-sac next to 4Chan’s lawless urban sprawl.

But is it enough to carry an entire newspaper? Read More

By Adrianne Jeffries 7/13/11 11:13am

The Internet Makes You Stupid

reddit tat

The Gangs of Reddit

When it comes to focusing the internet’s attention on a single page, Digg.com used to be king. But it’s been about a year since Digg was upset by its smaller, more indie competitor: the highly-active forums of Conde Nast-owned Reddit, a generally happy place of kitten GIFs and funny memes and self-confessions and so on. But in the more divisive sub-forums, writes The Daily Dot, evil lurks. “Like any community, Reddit has its dark sides. It has neighborhoods rife with porn, racism, misogyny, and violence. And it’s also got gangs,” The Daily Dot wrote ominously yesterday.

Gangs?! On Reddit?! Read More