So the story is the same:<p>"Digg the Web Property" sold for ~$500k which is tragic, good luck running that without a team.<p>The new info is that the "Digg the Team" was acquired for $12mil (whatever acquiring a "team" means, sounds like stock options executed and hiring packages all around) and bizarrely, "Digg the Technology Patents" were apparently worth about 8 times what the site is worth and went for about $4mil. I'm assuming that "Digg the Web Property" has some perpetual free license to the patents as part of the deal.<p>The Patent deal is probably overvalued as well (since it includes worthless patents like "click to upvote something", but probably represents LinkedIn trying to recoup some of it's massive lost investment. I wouldn't be surprised if the purchase value was an attempt to make the patents look like they are worth more than they are in prep for an eventual second sale to other parties.<p>All told, "Digg" sold for around 35% of its total investment, with 75% of that being the staff acquisition by WaPo, which essentially means that the <i>actual</i> "Digg" properties, patents, code, viewership, business deals, social network reach, ad network etc. was sold for about $4.5mil or less than 10% on the investment.<p><i>note that in a strange demonstration of why if failed as a social news site, the news of Digg's own sale has yet to show up on Digg's front page</i>
"Rose also pointed out that Digg once got an acquisition offer for close to $80 million ($60 million plus earnout) during the site's heyday. While he was personally willing to take this offer, the Digg board decided to turn it down."<p><a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/kevin_rose_at_disrupt.php" rel="nofollow">http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/kevin_rose_at_disrupt.p...</a>
This story hasn't changed at all - the earlier reports were that the purchase hadn't included any of the staff, it's old news that they were hired by WaPo.
500K is too low for 100%. What likely happened is betaworks got 50-60% with the agreement they invest on the future of the site. Best deal for current shareholder, who still keep 30-40%.
The 500K were not to buy the company, but to pay out some people who didn't want the new deal.
So Reid Hoffman invested his own money and then LinkedIn blows several million in acquisition of IP from a company that is in the deadpool.<p>No conflict of interest there. Can't wait for the lawsuits.