Yahoo Offers To Buy Digg?
I hate posting rumors, but I won’t ignore this one. J. Botter says Yahoo has an offer on the table to buy Digg, the community news service, for $35 million. If you look at Yahoo’s recent aquisitions (del.icio.us, Flickr), this fits right in, but it doesn’t work well as part of a general corporate strategy. Frankly, Yahoo could build a Digg out of del.icio.us for a lot cheaper.
(via Kevin Burton > Hat-tip: Tristan Louis sitting in the chair behind me 
)
“Frankly, Yahoo could build a Digg out of del.icio.us for a lot cheaper.”
I don’t think it’s about the software. Yahoo has thousands of great programmers. It’s probably more about the installed userbase of Digg.
Comment by J. Botter | January 25, 2006
Several times, major companies have released services that mimicked smaller, very popular startups, and watched as their services quickly eclipsed in popularity the originals, simply because their userbase is so large. Besides, Digg doesn’t cover enough topics, so if Yahoo launched a wide-ranging site, they’d leave Digg far behind very quickly.
Comment by Nathan Weinberg | January 25, 2006
Digg already has plans to add many more topics and I would guess is developing that as we speak.
Comment by Niraj | January 25, 2006
Adding on to my previous comment, digg has officially dispelled the rumors of a Yahoo purchase: http://diggtheblog.blogspot.com/2006/01/digg-yahoo.html
Comment by Niraj | January 26, 2006