O, how the mighty fall have an asthma attack and roll off the side of a cliff. Digg, erstwhile king of the internet, just sold itself for a mere $500,000. In 2008, it turned down Google's offer of two hundred million.


Of course, in 2008, Digg was one of the top sites on the entire internet. Now, not so much. As Gizmodo alumnus Mat Honan points out, this is exactly .0005 Instagrams. That's pretty much a "we're not giving you zero dollars, now shut up and die" offer in tech land, and certainly not enough to keep Digg going as anything that resembles the Digg of today: WSJ says "None of Digg's remaining employees will join Betaworks as part of the acquisition." Frankly, Digg should be glad it wasn't offered a free bowl of warm soup and some Hollywood Video gift cards.

The site, which once carried the massive internet clout of Reddit in 2012—able to make or break (literally) entire websites with its gigantic traffic tsunamis—was just acquired for less than it costs to buy a tiny apartment in New York. The Wall Street Journal reports that the "New York technology development firm Betaworks," which " intends to fold Digg into News.me Inc. a digital media startup that Betaworks launched in April 2011." Considering nobody knows what the hell News.me is, this is goodbye for Digg, which drifts off to join Blockbuster, CompUSA, Sam Goody, and MySpace's lower torso under some shadowy rock in hell. Bye, Digg! You'll long remind us of the late 2000s, when Rihanna was busy capturing our hearts, and you were worth actual attention, and maybe even money. [WSJ]


Photo by Kdt