Betaworks plans to combine Digg with its own mobile social news endeavour called news.me. News.me collects the best stories shared by friends on Facebook and Twitter. The social news service is available on iPhone and ipad as well as by email.
Digg confirmed on its blog that the company would be taken over by Betaworks.
"We couldn’t be happier to announce that the next generation of Digg will live on with the team from Betaworks," Digg CEO Matt Williams wrote. "Betaworks is combining Digg with News.me, a Betaworks company with an iPad app, iPhone app and daily email that delivers the best stories shared by your friends on Facebook and Twitter. Digg will join a portfolio of products developed by Betaworks designed to improve the way people find and talk about the news. Betaworks founder John Borthwick will be the CEO of the new Digg."
Digg launched seven years ago and has had over 350 million digs, 28 million story submissions and 40 million comments.
Digg was founded by Kevin Rose who left the news aggregation site to spend time on various projects and was recently hired by Google.
"I’ve always been a fan of John’s product vision and the companies he builds, funds, and advises," said Kevin Rose. "John understands the real-time nature of the web and how to capture and surface trends as they occur. Given his experience with bit.ly, news.me, and Chartbeat I can’t wait to see what he does with Digg."
Digg was once the most popular source to find news stories or promote articles but started losing users as people shifted over to Twitter and Facebook to share news with friends.
Digg experienced even more problems after a backlash from redesigning its site in 2010 and the launch of competitor social news site Reddit.
Bu October 2010 Digg had cut a third of its staff with half of its team being hired by Washington Post in early 2012.
"Both Kevin and I would like to thank everyone who made Digg’s journey possible — our amazing community, our talented employees who have developed the site over the past 7 years, the many investors who believed in our vision including Greylock, Highland, and Andreessen Horowitz, and countless others who have supported us along the way," wrote Williams.
Betaworks plans to launch a new cloud-based version of Digg to complement News.me iPhone and iPad applications.
"We are turning Digg back into a startup," Betaworks wrote in a blog post. "Low budget, small team, fast cycles. The News.me team will take Digg back to its essence: the best place to find, read, and share the stories the internet is talking about. Right now."
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