FARK.com: (7210492) After being valued in the hundreds of millions just four years ago, Digg finally sold for the princely sum of $500K, a broken pocketwatch, a rabbit's foot, and a lucky silver dime

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		After being valued in the hundreds of millions just four years ago, Digg finally sold for the princely sum of $500K, a broken pocketwatch, a rabbit's foot, and a lucky silver dime (slashgear.com)		146
		More: Amusing, Digg, social news, bytes, USD

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13524 clicks; posted to Main » on 12 Jul 2012 at 6:04 PM | Favorite | share:

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LDM90		2012-07-12 06:39:05 PM

aircraftkiller: CaptainCliche:
Fix'd

"Fixed" is the word you're looking for.

I think you mean lookin'

DeltaPunch		2012-07-12 06:39:44 PM

This Digg?

img20.imageshack.us

Harry_Seldon		2012-07-12 06:40:08 PM

buntz: I don't know how this works. How do they determine it's worth?

For example, what is Fark worth? If I wanted to buy Fark, what would it cost me?

/serious question

$5.00/month.

mongbiohazard		2012-07-12 06:42:10 PM

Ah... Digg, just like Fark except with extra eye-bleeding.

Seriously, that site is so ugly. That's what turned me off of it.

TheNyquilKid		2012-07-12 06:42:49 PM

seniorgato: Nadie_AZ: What is that they did again? Paid users to skew content?

I'm kinda curious about that myself. They must have done something... I'm completely out of the loop I guess.

A terrible redesign that farked with many core features of the site quickly followed by a user revolt. Never understood why they didn't just admit they farked up and revert back to the old design then go back to work a good redesign, guess they figured the users would get over it.

Dio2112		2012-07-12 06:43:19 PM

Several years ago on This Week in Tech, Jason Calacanis said that when he was at AOL they were throwing around the idea of trying to acquire Fark. He said their internal valuation put Fark at $60 million. That was maybe five years ago, though.

jtown		2012-07-12 06:44:48 PM

WhyteRaven74: kd1s: I think Digg lost a lot of credibility when they did their big 2.0 swticheroo. It was horrid, broke all the RSS capabilities, and was overall just an unpleasant experience.

Yep, that's what I remember happening too. Their redesign was more than a cosmetic change over but an actual reworking of the site itself and well, it wasn't done well and it ticked people off. I can remember when Digg was popular, then a couple months later, not so much.

PainInTheASP: I never really dug Digg. I couldn't get the tire pump to shoot fast enough.

+eleventy internets

Yeah, it was like someone flipped a switch and it turned into a ghost town. I've seen sites taper off but nothing like that. The magazine I was working for did a story on Digg right around the time of The Change. Basically user-generated content being the Wave of the Future(tm)(r)(c)(ltd) and Digg was leading the charge. By the time it went to print, Digg was nothing but tumbleweeds and crickets.

shiat, look at the front page right now. 26, 9, 18, 1, 2, 1 comments.

HenryFnord		2012-07-12 06:45:33 PM

So it's another slashdot or plastic.

TenaciousP		2012-07-12 06:47:20 PM

SmackLT: buntz: I don't know how this works. How do they determine it's worth?

For example, what is Fark worth? If I wanted to buy Fark, what would it cost me?

/serious question

About $8 and a candy bar

It is a good question. I know TFark is worth a hell of a lot more than $5/month to me. Sometimes I wish Drew would hike it a bit to "thin the herd." I would imagine he's received some hefty offers, considering Fark's staying power among other imitators. Drew hasn't sold out, which is pretty awesome.

And yes, I know who else wanted to "thin the herd."

WhyteRaven74		2012-07-12 06:48:46 PM

jtown: Yeah, it was like someone flipped a switch and it turned into a ghost town

I can remember when there were tons of sites with buttons on them where you click the button and it would auto submit to Digg. Most of those went away fairly quickly. I can't think of a bigger online implosion myself than Digg.

CaptainCliche		2012-07-12 06:49:00 PM

aircraftkiller: CaptainCliche:
Fix'd

"Fixed" is the word you're looking for.

Why'd ye pynt oot me foony ac'cynt!

SmackLT		2012-07-12 06:49:09 PM

TenaciousP: And yes, I know who else wanted to "thin the herd."

You know who ELSE wanted to--

oh, dammit

GAT_00		2012-07-12 06:49:15 PM

TenaciousP: Drew hasn't sold out, which is pretty awesome.

Except, he has. You notice the partner sites?

ReapTheChaos		2012-07-12 06:49:46 PM

Give users a really cool thing, let them use it extensively for a couple years, then roll out several mucked up, convoluted new format changes and add new features that nobody asked for, likes or understands. Combine that with the normal fickle market that is the internet and watch your business dwindle to nothing.

That's what happened to Myspace, that's what happened to Digg and that's what will eventually happen to Facebook.

buntz		2012-07-12 06:49:47 PM

El Freak: About $1.50.

groppet: $5 a month for the rest of your life or 1 Brazillion dollars!!!

SmackLT: About $8 and a candy bar

Harry_Seldon: $5.00/month.

i1.kym-cdn.com

fusillade762		2012-07-12 06:50:06 PM

Never been to Digg so I went to check it out just now. Does anyone else hate threaded forums? Note to Fark: please don't ever do that.

Deathfrogg		2012-07-12 06:51:02 PM

GAT_00: Death Eats a Cracker: I remember being on Digg long before I discovered Fark. They changed something about the site that I didn't like and I never went back. Or something like that. It's kinda fuzzy because I was drunk a lot back then.

I think they had a bad retool a few years back, plus a scandal of some kind. Those killed 90%+ of their traffic.

The "scandal" was the Republican Party, through the National Chamber of Commerce were paying people, a LOT of people, to troll the conversations and Digg down or up various stories depending on how friendly they were to the GOP. They were totally gaming the system and corrupting it. Digg became useless for actual discussion when that happened.

I quit using it when it became obvious that the Taliban/Corporatist/Neofascist set were working the site over pretty hard.

WhyteRaven74		2012-07-12 06:51:19 PM

LDM90: What turned me off from Digg was the users themselves

I think a lot of them ended up at The Daily What, talk about some whiny people. Yeeeeesh.

MrEricSir		2012-07-12 06:51:29 PM

buntz: How do they determine it's worth?

Like anything else, a business is worth whatever people will pay for it. Google offered to buy Digg for $200 million, which means the site was worth $200 million.

Of course, that was four years ago, which is one hell of a devaluation.

blahpers		2012-07-12 06:53:00 PM

picturescrazy		2012-07-12 06:54:04 PM

Dio2112: Several years ago on This Week in Tech, Jason Calacanis said that when he was at AOL they were throwing around the idea of trying to acquire Fark. He said their internal valuation put Fark at $60 million. That was maybe five years ago, though.

Don't you dare tell Drew his site is worth anything. If he sells this place we're all farked.

Unknown_Poltroon		2012-07-12 06:56:26 PM

Well, the site redesign pissed a lot of people off, but I think the real killer was they also started playing with the voting numbers or articles,so sponsors shiat got bullshiat articles up to the top of the pile, I saw one evening where it looked like half of the "hot" articles were hotel review spam or something. Switched to reddit as primary for that sort of news thing and havent looked at digg more than twice in the last year. Cant stop farking either.

TheNyquilKid		2012-07-12 06:58:18 PM

picturescrazy: Dio2112: Several years ago on This Week in Tech, Jason Calacanis said that when he was at AOL they were throwing around the idea of trying to acquire Fark. He said their internal valuation put Fark at $60 million. That was maybe five years ago, though.

Don't you dare tell Drew his site is worth anything. If he sells this place we're all farked.

Or someone buys farked.com and steals the old layout.

/If you go to farked.com don't use Netscape apparently "it looks shiat on Netscape. Their fault, not mine."

weiserfireman		2012-07-12 06:58:48 PM

According to cubestat.com

Fark.com is worth $846,000

Daily page views about 386,000

Estimated Daily Ad revenue $1159.20

I have no idea if any of that is accurate

AdmiralFrosty		2012-07-12 07:03:33 PM

Digg had an odd algorithm to determine an articles placement in the feed. It was some ratio of diggs/time. No one really knew what it was, but if an article got a ton of diggs (up or down) initially, you could artificially inflate that hidden score and game the entire site. Hit squads would go around, promote their own pages and bury others, astroturfing the place to hell.

Then Reddit happened, which featured straight "up or down" ratings and many, user-created sub-feeds....

Kenny B		2012-07-12 07:07:49 PM

Only a matter of time before Drew sells out. FARK-PO has a nice ring to it.

OmniView		2012-07-12 07:09:18 PM

Nice job! Way to hold out until the end. Congratulations bain capital! Buy fark next!

ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha		2012-07-12 07:11:53 PM

weiserfireman: According to cubestat.com

Fark.com is worth $846,000

Daily page views about 386,000

Estimated Daily Ad revenue $1159.20

I have no idea if any of that is accurate

It seems it's just basing that off of the Alexa Rank, which is pretty much worthless.

dickfreckle		2012-07-12 07:19:31 PM

kd1s: I think Digg lost a lot of credibility when they did their big 2.0 swticheroo. It was horrid, broke all the RSS capabilities, and was overall just an unpleasant experience.

I'm curious as to what Gawker Network (Lifehacker, Gizmodo, i09, et al) traffic is like since their universally loathed design change. Not only did the change itself render the site far more difficult to use - people who complained were treated as errant children. And while the owner never actually said, "You'll get over it," his post was far more insulting.

It was a shame, because I valued a lot of the discussion particularly at Lifehacker (it's amazing the random sh*t you can learn there) and Gizmodo, because despite being devastatingly handsome I'm a nerd at heart. As soon as the change happened, the entire community turned to a two month-long, community-wide b*tchfest and I just gave up on the network completely.

I haven't been back since, and now get RSS from Engadget and a couple others. I don't even like clicking Gawker Network links here at Fark.

scraping-fetus-off-the-wheel		2012-07-12 07:20:09 PM

Digg came along in the wake of Fark and sucked immediately. Then it sucked some more. Now it sucks bigger than ever and only 7 people even look at it and talk about how much it sucks.
Tl,dr-digg still sucks

halB		2012-07-12 07:20:39 PM

When they switched over to forcing borders on EVERY FREAKING LINK I never went back. Sucks to be the person that bought them.

IP		2012-07-12 07:22:19 PM

Jumpin Jbot: "For over years, internet webpages refreshing and checking their hits enjoyed the honor of a triumph - a tumultuous parade. In the procession came articles and pirated music and LOLCats from the conquered inter, together with carts laden with safe-for-work porn and captured audiences. The admin rode in a triumphal chariot, the dazed trolls walking in chains before him. Sometimes his users, robed in white, stood with him in the ad-supported chariot, or wrote the trace humor. A Farker stood behind the admin, holding a golden crown, and whispering in his ear a warning:

That all glory is fleeting."

i0.kym-cdn.com

Thudfark		2012-07-12 07:22:19 PM

CaptainCliche: El Freak: buntz: I don't know how this works. How do they determine it's worth?

For example, what is Fark worth? If I wanted to buy Fark, what would it cost me?

/serious question

About ~~$1.50~~ tree fiddy.

Fix'd

Tree fiddy you say?

Virulency		2012-07-12 07:25:00 PM

buntz: El Freak: About $1.50.

groppet: $5 a month for the rest of your life or 1 Brazillion dollars!!!

SmackLT: About $8 and a candy bar

Harry_Seldon: $5.00/month.

Yah come on at least a six pack of beer!

Tax Boy		2012-07-12 07:31:22 PM

digg started to suck right around the same time they quit drinking (or only drank reasonable amounts) on Diggnation.

Coincidence?

I think not

emiliogtz		2012-07-12 07:35:27 PM

I stopped going there about the time they released v3. By then I was spending more time on Fark and Digg looked more like a huge popularity contest.

/I believe I haven't paid a single visit to Digg ever since.

Flint Ironstag		2012-07-12 07:42:38 PM

dickfreckle: kd1s: I think Digg lost a lot of credibility when they did their big 2.0 swticheroo. It was horrid, broke all the RSS capabilities, and was overall just an unpleasant experience.

I'm curious as to what Gawker Network (Lifehacker, Gizmodo, i09, et al) traffic is like since their universally loathed design change. Not only did the change itself render the site far more difficult to use - people who complained were treated as errant children. And while the owner never actually said, "You'll get over it," his post was far more insulting.

It was a shame, because I valued a lot of the discussion particularly at Lifehacker (it's amazing the random sh*t you can learn there) and Gizmodo, because despite being devastatingly handsome I'm a nerd at heart. As soon as the change happened, the entire community turned to a two month-long, community-wide b*tchfest and I just gave up on the network completely.

I haven't been back since, and now get RSS from Engadget and a couple others. I don't even like clicking Gawker Network links here at Fark.

Same here. I used to visit every day and had a Defamer and Jalopnik button on my bookmark bar. Deleted them both. Never gone back. The final straw was a "Anyone who posts in this thread will be banned" thread. So I posted saying "I'll get over it...." and that was it.

Just checked on Wikipedia and it says "As of March 23, 2012, it became mandatory to sign in to any Gawker site with a Twitter, Facebook, or Google account." so I am definitely not going back. Fark that shiat.

Flint Ironstag		2012-07-12 07:48:12 PM

Flint Ironstag:
Same here. I used to visit every day and had a Defamer and Jalopnik button on my bookmark bar. Deleted them both. Never gone back. The final straw was a "Anyone who posts in this thread will be banned" thread. So I posted saying "I'll get over it...." and that was it.

Found the thread. So funny reading all the comments from people happy to be banned. And posting goatse pictures just to make sure.

Trafficguy2000		2012-07-12 07:51:32 PM

how much is fark worth?

A box of newports and some pumas sweats

elffster		2012-07-12 07:52:54 PM

AdolfOliverPanties: Valuated? Why not just valued?

That's as annoying as "conversate."

/except for the part about vaulated being an actual word
//don't know what I'm on about

Conversate....ugh, when folks use that word..I get extra stabby. I first heard it in Seesels on Union. "I aint trying to conversate you, baby.." this dope was saying to a lady over by the frozen food/bread isle.

I mentally facepalmed.

The Onion is prophetic		2012-07-12 07:53:06 PM

buntz: I don't know how this works. How do they determine it's worth?

For example, what is Fark worth? If I wanted to buy Fark, what would it cost me?

/serious question

$10.4 million?

Carth		2012-07-12 08:03:13 PM

The Onion is prophetic: buntz: I don't know how this works. How do they determine it's worth?

For example, what is Fark worth? If I wanted to buy Fark, what would it cost me?

/serious question

$10.4 million?

but they have digg.com worth 109 million. Since it sold for about 1/200th of that can we say fark is worth about 52,000?

fusillade762		2012-07-12 08:10:33 PM

Deathfrogg: GAT_00: Death Eats a Cracker: I remember being on Digg long before I discovered Fark. They changed something about the site that I didn't like and I never went back. Or something like that. It's kinda fuzzy because I was drunk a lot back then.

I think they had a bad retool a few years back, plus a scandal of some kind. Those killed 90%+ of their traffic.

The "scandal" was the Republican Party, through the National Chamber of Commerce were paying people, a LOT of people, to troll the conversations and Digg down or up various stories depending on how friendly they were to the GOP. They were totally gaming the system and corrupting it. Digg became useless for actual discussion when that happened.

I quit using it when it became obvious that the Taliban/Corporatist/Neofascist set were working the site over pretty hard.

I wonder how many Fark Independents^tm are actually paid shills?

Thorndyke Barnhard		2012-07-12 08:16:49 PM

Wow, end of an era. For all the "You'll get over it." jokes around here, Fark really did do their design upgrades right, with massive consultation and responsiveness. I mean, fer Kryst's sake, Drew himself replied to a comment on the site once.
Sad to see Digg go like that, but it seems that this really was avoidable and they just didn't care.

Eric The Pilot		2012-07-12 08:20:55 PM

SevenizGud		2012-07-12 08:24:56 PM

Shorting GRPN, so getting a kick.

The whole social media thing, and all collateral efforts are tech bubble 2.0.

Every one of these efforts goes to ZERO, unless online gambling is legalized in the USA.

whereisian		2012-07-12 08:34:34 PM

Digg was good when it was a tech news site. The second politics came in, things got stupid.

Mitch Taylor's Bro		2012-07-12 08:36:51 PM

This seems relevant.

socoloco		2012-07-12 08:37:32 PM

Digg dugg themselves down.

\can you dig it?

Capt_Fodder		2012-07-12 08:42:33 PM

Flint Ironstag: dickfreckle: kd1s: I think Digg lost a lot of credibility when they did their big 2.0 swticheroo. It was horrid, broke all the RSS capabilities, and was overall just an unpleasant experience.

I'm curious as to what Gawker Network (Lifehacker, Gizmodo, i09, et al) traffic is like since their universally loathed design change. Not only did the change itself render the site far more difficult to use - people who complained were treated as errant children. And while the owner never actually said, "You'll get over it," his post was far more insulting.

It was a shame, because I valued a lot of the discussion particularly at Lifehacker (it's amazing the random sh*t you can learn there) and Gizmodo, because despite being devastatingly handsome I'm a nerd at heart. As soon as the change happened, the entire community turned to a two month-long, community-wide b*tchfest and I just gave up on the network completely.

I haven't been back since, and now get RSS from Engadget and a couple others. I don't even like clicking Gawker Network links here at Fark.

Same here. I used to visit every day and had a Defamer and Jalopnik button on my bookmark bar. Deleted them both. Never gone back. The final straw was a "Anyone who posts in this thread will be banned" thread. So I posted saying "I'll get over it...." and that was it.

Just checked on Wikipedia and it says "As of March 23, 2012, it became mandatory to sign in to any Gawker site with a Twitter, Facebook, or Google account." so I am definitely not going back. Fark that shiat.

Interesting note: They just changed it again and somehow managed to make it EVEN WORSE. The commenting system is nothing short of bizarre.

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