Site that made $60 Million+ sold for ONLY $500K

[Clinton]

Yes, folk. A site that made $60 million + in the first 18 months sold for only $500K yesterday: Digg.com. In the past they raised over $45 million in funding and Google reportedly once offered $200 Million to buy the site.

Now worth $500K!

News.

Why didn't one of you guys buy it? It needed only a little bit of SEO!

[Thomas]

Was actually quite a bit more than that if you include the IP too (which was sold separately): http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/12/dig...and-betaworks/

[Clinton]

True. The Washington post bought the Digg "team" a long time ago (Digg probably didn't get the money for that - the costs would have been in compensating employees for stock options etc) and LinkedIn bought the patents (possibly with the idea of suing FB and making a few bucks ).

The $500K price is for "the Digg domain name, the code behind the site, the existing data, and all of the traffic".

But, yes, sometimes it pays to break a site up and sell the component parts.

[OLechat]

We got a few (likely tongue in cheek!) comments on Twitter about how Digg would have sold for more on Flippa. We certainly would have loved having them list!

I remember using Digg years ago, sad to see it finally go, and for so little...

[everythingrevolves]

I think there are lots of "assets" going cheap at present and this shows "Internet assets" are no different..

I think the interesting aspect of these stories is trying to understand that the "Early Adopters" & "Core Team" proberly made their money long before any "downswing"

This is another great example of timing being key.

Friends Reunited is a simliar story I think, big win for the founders when sold to ITV, massive loss to ITV when sold on...

I do agree that I bet there would have been a higher price than 500k if it was a more open market, the "Search" Value alone is considerably higher.. someone got a deal )))