The Washington Post is reportedly buying news aggregator Digg’s technology team, putting the future of the site into question.
AllThingsD reports that The Washington Post will hire Digg’s technology team to work on its social reader app for Facebook. There were initial rumours that the publisher would purchase Digg itself, but it appears it will only take on its technology staff.
Digg’s management is reportedly still working out how to take advantage of the site’s brand and traffic. However, the site had been looking for a buyer for months, making its future seem more uncertain.
Digg was founded in 2004 by entrepreneur Kevin Rose and was once hugely popular. However, a major redesign which saw it drop lots of its old features caused a backlash from its users and many moved to its rival Reddit. It was forced to cut its staff numbers to deal with the losses.
However, the site recently saw increased mobile traffic thanks to its Facebook Timeline app. It saw a 29pc increase in unique visitors since December and the Facebook Timeline app brought in more than 1m monthly users.