Digg was once the epicenter of Internet cool and culture. It was a content king maker: get your story on Digg's homepage and watch the traffic roll in. Then came the precipitous fall from grace and, finally, a less-than-exciting-sale to Betaworks (for a reported $500,000) last week. The news left many in the web community stunned. How had did a company that had risen so quickly and gained a massive, grassroots group of fans fall so far?

Digg was founded in 2004, and handily rose to become one of the most popular social news aggregators. Yet the decisions made in the site's design over the years drove users away in droves in 2009 and 2010.

In the timeline below, we examine how Digg rose to success, and missteps that lead to its downfall. Were you a regular user of Digg? Do you still use it? Let us know what you think in the comments.