(First published on the Compete.com blog on 11/08/2007)
Is Digg close to a $300 million sale?
Good thing Digg didn’t sell itself a year ago. Digg has performed spectacularly in the past 12 months. All key user and engagement metrics are up dramatically for the site:
Now I know Facebook and Digg are fundamentally different services, it’s an interesting head to head comparison nevertheless:
- Even though Digg’s and Facebook’s unique visitor numbers aren’t that far apart, the engagement metrics reveal fundamental valuation driving differences between the two sites.
- Facebook users are much more engaged with the site. They come back to the site more often, spend more time, and view more pages. Most important – most Facebook users have user accounts, have to be signed in to use any Facebook feature, and voluntarily share lots of juicy facts about themselves with Facebook. This has to be the main driver behind Facebook’s lofty $620/unique visitor valuation.
- Interesting that both have multi-year multi-million dollar ad deals with Microsoft.
Will Digg get acquired soon? We’ll find out soon enough. Maybe Microsoft should use some of its $18.8 billion war chest (again) to buy a small piece of Digg in its bid to catch up with Google/Yahoo/Fox in the social networking game. After all, Microsoft already has a $100 million ad deal with Digg.