Digg, the Reddit of the mid-aughts, has been sold for a paltry half-million dollars, The Wall Street Journal reports, just four years after passing on Google’s $200 million (!!!) offer. The fallen social news site will be absorbed by Betaworks and combined with its startup News.me, but the Journal reports that, “None of Digg’s remaining employees will join Betaworks as part of the acquisition.” (A bunch of engineers jumped ship for the Washington Post Co. in May.) Digg founder and former tech “It” boy Kevin Rose once covered Businessweek with the headline “How This Kid Made $60 Million in 18 Months,” but he resigned last year after the site failed to recover from an ugly and alienating redesign, and could no longer compete in a more competitive social-media marketplace. This is what giving up looks like.
