Tag: Matt Williams

Digg This: Digg Just Got Sold For Less Than Seven Kilos Of Panda Poop Tea

Digg is being sold to Betaworks, the company behind Bitly, News.me, Chartbeat, Findings, SocialFlow, and BlogLovin’.

It’s no secret that Digg is not the shining star of the tech world that it once was, but according to the Wall Street Journal, the price tag was only a ridiculously low $500,000 dollars. For comparison, Facebook just bought Instagram for $1 billion.

Google was once in talks to buy Digg for $200 million.

Mark Cuban recently invested that much in a startup that nobody’s ever heard of.

For further comparison, the OUYA game system, a Kickstarter project, has raised over $4 million, with 27 days left to reach its goal $950,000 goal.

Here’s a random four-bedroom house in Lexington, KY that’s on the market for $534K.

100 of these hamburgers cost the same amount:

You could buy 2 Diggs for this bottle of coconut brandy:

Or this collection of video games.

You get the idea.

In case you don’t, according to Gawker, it costs more to obtain seven kilos of panda poop tea.

Digg CEO Matt Williams writes on the Digg Blog:

We couldn’t be happier to announce that the next generation of Digg will live on with the team from Betaworks. Betaworks is combining Digg with News.me, a Betaworks company with an iPad app, iPhone app and daily email that delivers the best stories shared by your friends on Facebook and Twitter. Digg will join a portfolio of products developed by Betaworks designed to improve the way people find and talk about the news. Betaworks founder John Borthwick will be the CEO of the new Digg.

Kevin wanted to share, “I’ve always been a fan of John’s product vision and the companies he builds, funds, and advises. John understands the real-time nature of the web and how to capture and surface trends as they occur. Given his experience with bit.ly, news.me, and Chartbeat I can’t wait to see what he does with Digg.”

Coming soon, Betaworks will unveil a new cloud-based version of Digg to complement the current News.me iPhone and iPad apps. Stay tuned.

Betaworks had this to say on its blog:

betaworks has acquired the core assets of Digg. Digg is one of the great internet brands, and it has meant a great deal to millions of users over the years. It was a pioneer in community-driven news.

We are turning Digg back into a startup. Low budget, small team, fast cycles.

How? We have spent the last 18 months building News.me as a mobile-first social news experience. The News.me team will take Digg back to its essence: the best place to find, read and share the stories the internet is talking about. Right now.

We are going to build Digg for 2012. More to come…

These days, Digg is getting 7 million unique monthly visitors, according to comScore.

Josh Wolford and Zach Walton contributed to this report.

July 12, 2012
Digg CEO Announces Big Layoffs

Six weeks after becoming Digg’s CEO, Matt Williams has made a tough call. Williams announced today that he intends to lay off 37 percent of the organization’s employees in an effort to keep Digg out of the red.

On the Digg About blog, Williams explained, "The fact is our business has a burn rate that is too high. We must significantly cut our expenses to achieve profitability in 2011. We’ve considered all of the possible options for reduction, from salaries to fixed costs. The result is that, in addition to lowering many of our operational costs, I’ve made the decision to downsize our staff from 67 to 42 people."

This is a scary sign for Digg (and Digg fans), as that’s a big cut and almost bound to have a significant effect on something. It’s unlikely that 25 employees held the title "pencil sharpener," after all.

One important note is that everyone affected by the move should have some help getting another job, though. Williams pledged, "I’m personally committed to help find new opportunities for everyone affected by the transition. Digg’s Board members have also offered to help find placements within their portfolio companies."

And losing 37 percent of its employees should allow Digg to save quite a lot of money, so it’s perhaps not time to order a virtual tombstone for the company just yet.

Williams wrote, "Let’s please use today to show our sincere appreciation for our friends and colleagues who will be moving on. Tomorrow, we’ll go forward with a new strategy for Digg."

October 25, 2010
Digg Has Found Its CEO

Update 2: Rose has now put up the offiical announcement. He writes:

I’d like to update you on the latest change at Digg. After several months of searching, we are excited to announce that Matt Williams will become the CEO of Digg. As you know, I have been the interim CEO, while we looked for the right person, and I will still remain actively involved in the product, but am handing over the day-to-day running of the business to Matt...

Quote from Matt: "The launch of version 4 was a big moment for Digg and I believe in the potential of this new platform. There is so much innovation yet to come — being the best in the world at curating news means solving the information overload we all experience every day. The Digg team has already made great strides in this direction and there is much more ahead. I’m excited to join such a talented team and such a vibrant Digg community."

Update: Kevin Rose has put up a new post on the Digg blog announcing some upcoming changes to the site, but no mention of the hiring of Williams.

Original Article: Digg has reportedly found its new CEO. According to TechCrunch, the company has hired former Amazon General Manager of Consumer Payments Matt Williams to fill the role.

Michael Arrington says Digg Founder Kevin Rose, who has assumed the CEO role since the departure of Jay Adelson earlier this year, will become Digg’s chief architect, which he used to be.

While Arrington claims to have confirmed the news, Digg has not yet made an announcement about hiring Williams – not even a tweet from Rose yet.

Assuming the news is indeed true, Williams gets to take over the company at an interesting time. The new redesign of Digg just launched (announced just after Adelson’s departure), and it is already inspiring some user backlash (the new home page is still being overrun by content from Digg competitor Reddit).

Williams has been with Amazon for 11 years. Before that he founded LiveBid, which was sold to Amazon in 1999.

August 31, 2010