Mashable - The Social Media Guide - Latest Comments in CBS Acquires Gossip Digg Clone for $10M

Re: CBS Acquires Gossip Digg Clone for $10M

Greg Gerber — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 15:44:09 -0000

Maybe Yentaz.com will be next.

Re: CBS Acquires Gossip Digg Clone for $10M

Adam Hirsch — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 12:35:36 -0000

CBS probably thought it was cheaper to buy DotSpotter than any of the alternatives out there. I think it's a good move for them since CBS is looking to move their technology game to the mass public (ie, your non techies). I think Dotspotter is a relatively well designed site and with CBS behind them, could bump those vote #s up.

- Adam Hirsch, Mashable.com

Re: CBS Acquires Gossip Digg Clone for $10M

john — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 09:42:23 -0000

That's all well and good.. but I prefer FlyLip . com - got the same celeb info but more interactive. Suppose they needed to shop around more befor the made a purchase.

Re: CBS Acquires Gossip Digg Clone for $10M

CountRob — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 01:27:17 -0000

Whoa, this thing just deleted the majority of my comment, which was approaching about 500 words... Ouch...

OK, well, if you google it several sources estimate the reddit buy was either 10 or 12 million. I had the links but they vaporized with the rest of my comment.

I guess I'll start all over...

CBS should just build a slashdot site where the editors post the content. They could analyse what people liked and tailor their stories to fit the interests of their audience. If it was breaking news, people would come. This thing they bought is not extending their brand, they should have just started from the ground up. Yes, the market is saturated with voting sites. But if the stories were breaking news direct from CBS, people would come.

Re: CBS Acquires Gossip Digg Clone for $10M

CountRob — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 01:18:17 -0000

I was mistaken. It was more like 10 million instead of a "few", though they never gave an actual price.

Guesses

Re: CBS Acquires Gossip Digg Clone for $10M

Pete — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 00:12:33 -0000

CountRob: do you have numbers on the Reddit buy? We never heard them.

Re: CBS Acquires Gossip Digg Clone for $10M

CountRob — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 00:05:52 -0000

Insanity. When Wired bought Reddit they only paid a few million and the userbase is second only to digg. Most stories get upwards of 1,000 votes. This dotspotter place is a ghost town.

I've mentioned that bubble 2.0 is a reality in other posts, and this is only more evidence. Every company is raising ridiculous money with the hopes of getting acquired. That is their business model. They use ads to offset the cost of bandwidth, but they have no way of ever returning their investment. Everything is overvalued at stupid-expensive prices. The chickens will come home to roost, and it's not going to be pretty.

Hopefully people will still be interested in Social Networking News when that happens...

Check out their alexa ranking below. I've seen sites in the top 500 go for a few hundred thousand. They are out of their minds to be paying 10 mil for a site ranked 25,000

http://www.alexa.com/data/d...

Re: CBS Acquires Gossip Digg Clone for $10M

Pete — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 21:51:30 -0000

Are we sure of that price? Seems way too much: site doesn't appear to have enough traction to justify it.

Re: CBS Acquires Gossip Digg Clone for $10M

Cameron Chapman — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 21:07:18 -0000

A lot of niche bookmarking sites tend to have significantly less traffic than Digg and the other mass media bookmarking sites. Look at Hugg... it's a very popular site for environmental news and gets a fair amount of traffic, but the front page news often only has 10-30 votes.

This doesn't mean that those sites don't have a fanatical fan-base, though. Often the users of these sites are insanely loyal and very active.

Re: CBS Acquires Gossip Digg Clone for $10M

cobb — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 21:00:17 -0000

it doesnt even look like the site is that active. the front page stories have less than 50 votes each.

Re: CBS Acquires Gossip Digg Clone for $10M

phenom — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 20:47:23 -0000

What is wrong with people, tomorrow if I clone FB will CBS acquire it. Even million would do. I m cheap.

http://vidsonly.blogspot.com