Social sharing site Digg has sold for just $500,000 to New York startup incubator Betaworks. The small selling price is shocking considering it was one of the hottest web startups.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Digg took more than $45 million from investors since their launch in 2004. Now Betaworks says it's going to turn Digg into the News.me team and "back into a startup. Low budget, small team, fast cycles."

However Matt Williams, Digg's CEO, told The New York Times that "the price floating around is inaccurate." Williams declined to reveal the final price because he says stock was involved, “the total consideration is more than the value quoted.”

The $500,000 price reported by the WSJ was apparently for Digg's core assets, and Digg's investors most likely got additional equity in Betaworks and Betaworks-backed companies.

Digg was once upon a time the place to be, before Reddit went mainstream. So it'll be interesting to see how the News.me team integrates the assets into its service.

via Mashable