Digg, the once-popular social news site, was acquired last week by Betaworks. Details of the acquisition were not disclosed, but there are reports stating that Betaworks paid $US500,000 for Digg's assets, including the site as well as its technology.

The amount paid for acquiring Digg was considerably less as compared to the time where it was thriving. Before there was even Facebook and Twitter, Digg used to be the most popular social news site for Internet users all over the world. There were also rumors that Google also planned to acquire Digg during its peak for an estimated amount of US$20 million. During its peak, Digg was estimated to be worth around US$150 million. As more and more Internet users turned to other social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, Digg was already slowly fading into the background. Some people even thought that Digg was already fading into obscurity before Betaworks proceeded to acquire the social news site.

As mentioned, exact details of the acquisition was not disclosed but it was revealed that Digg sharholders were able to receive equity in a new Betaworks unit that will utilize those assets. The equity was said to be worth around the "single-digit millions". Matt Williams, the Chief Executive for Diggs remarked that Digg spent a lot of time looking for the right buyers. Digg specifically looled for buyers that are technology incubators and were interested in news-related start-ups thus ending up choosing Betaworks. Williams disclosed his thoughts on the matter stating that

"Betaworks seemed like a great fit. They want to reinvent Digg, and that's exactly what they will do."

Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg also shared the same sentiment and expressed his confidence on John Borthwick, the founder of Betaworks.

Betaworks is a company that is invested in technology services. Betaworks is also the brain behind Bit.ly, the link-shortening service, and News.me, an iPad-based news aggregator developed in together with The New York Times Company. Betaworks plans to develop a new unit which would combine the Digg assets and News.me and it also has plans to create a new version of Digg that would go hand in hand with News.me's iPhone and iPad applications. John Borthwick, the founder of Betaworks would also act as the chief executive for Digg.