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"Could Digg be worth $250 million?  How about the blog network Gawker Media for $400 million?  Or Facebook for $1 billion?  These are the sorts of valuations being thrown out for social sites and media properties after YouTube struck gold with its $1.6 billion price tag.\nThe latest figures are being suggested in a column today from the NYPost's Sam Gustin, the same guy who put forward YouTube's $1.5 billion number, got criticized by the skeptics and was eventually proven right.  And to be fair, the numbers actually seem on target: Digg and Craigslist are given the same price ($250 million), while the video entertainment site Heavy.com is valued at around $100 million.  The gossipy blog network built around Popsugar is thought to be worth $100 million, while the travel site Kayak.com is at $50 million and Friendster gets a measly $25 million valuation.  Those valuations are in line with the rumored $1 billion Yahoo-Facebook acquisition (which is now stalling), and the $200 million figure Business Week gave for Digg when they profiled founder Kevin Rose.\nHere's my somewhat-predictable thinking: Digg will be sold, most likely to Yahoo, for around $200 million.  Yahoo already snapped up Flickr and fellow bookmarking site del.icio.us: Digg would give them a trio of geek-orientated social sites, and may even turn out to be the strongest of the three.  But I don't think Digg is the future of news in the same way that YouTube is the future of TV: the demographic is too techie, and I don't see them being able to widen it to accommodate a mainstream audience.  Who wants to stare at text all day when video and photos are more appealing?  Likewise, Facebook's future isn't as certain as YouTube's: they're opening up, but the core users don't like it.  Carry on alienating the user base, and you could have the next Friendster on your hands - but if they don't open up, they severely limit the site's growth potential.  That puts Yahoo in a tough spot: boss Terry Semel skipped on YouTube, and in my opinion the two most likely acquisition targets don't look as strong.  Of course, all these price tags are completely imaginary until someone actually puts up the money.\n"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2006/10/19/diggs-new-price-tag-250-million/>