Why Digg?

According to TechCrunch.com on 7/22, the Internet Giant Google is negotiating to buy Digg for around $200M and the rumors are spreading all over the blogsphere and the Internet - Some reports that they already have signed a letter of intent. This is the third time the buyout rumor has surfaced again after March in this year.

Why Digg?



Despite of the recent number of unique visitors compared to it's biggest competitor, Yahoo Buzz, why can't Google build their own Digg, but buy Digg? The below may be the possible reasons so far.



1. The first possible reason is that Google is interested in "social search."

The Google brain is moving their interest to the relationship between the preference of the person who votes the articles and the articles themselves. So Google may not want to put their efforts building the site but "social search" based on the existing organized community site such as Digg.






2. Second, Digg currently has 3 years advertising contract with MS and the deal would be terminated if Google buys Digg. We may see some interesting reaction by MS since MS lose the game of Yahoo search advertisement by Google.







What would be the challenges?



1. "The beginning of the end" said by some blogger after this rumor. What does it mean?



After many Web 2.0 related sites have been opened, the people post their idea, thoughts, and the story and exchange them in those sites. However some of the major Web 2.0 sites such as YouTube, Flickr, and Facebooks acquired by big companies, the free becomes the limitation and the rules.

If this deal is closed and Google has Digg under their umbrella, would Google do the content moderation or something? Can we still keep posting our idea or thoughts around the blogsphere without BIG G's control?



2. The recent data by ComScore regarding June traffic shows that Digg has 6.2 million and Yahoo Buzz, the major competitor, has 9.2 million.

In addition, Propeller, the social network site by AOL, is re-launched with new look and feel and is integrated with AOL. So this competition may be the headache to Google.

3. Google does not care after they buy Digg?

We have seen the case that Google only has added the AdSense in the feed without any improvements after they bought Feedburner about $100M in the last June 2007. What would Google do with Digg?







About Digg



Digg was launched in November 2004 by a group of young entrepreneurs including Kevin Rose and is one of the best-known social network site.

Digg initially gave the side impact to the several Website providers including Wordpress to crash due to the increased traffic, called "Digg Effect."

In this third time rumors seems more specific and more realistic that Google will buy Digg and especially most bloggers are interested in how it goes. We basically want to see whether Google can develop "social search" based on Digg and upgrade the blogsphere to the next level or Google just wants to use Digg as their business and govern the blogsphere under their control.