Why Digg would want to sell?

For years now, Digg.com has always been rumored to be up for sale. Not a single one of them were confirmed by Digg’s CEO Jay Adelson or its founder Kevin Rose. However, this week’s tip about the possible sale of Digg is most intriguing.

Twenty months ago, the price tag was just $30 Million and Yahoo was thought to be the buyer. This week, everybody’s been talking about it again and the price tag is already a whooping $300 Million.

Is Digg really up for sale? Looks like it. But why? Here’s my top 5 reasons why Digg wants an exit:

• First, social news and voting is like so yesterday. Everybody’s doing it nowadays. Digg just popularized the idea but did not own it. Soon, it will become so common that every website and blog will have its own Digg-style system.
• The copycats are diluting the innovativeness and thus the Digg brand as well. We don’t need Digg. There are many other Digg-clones we can get our Diggamogous traffic. Besides, it’s now way harder to game the Digg system.
• Digg doesn’t really have a sound revenue model. Diggers are to clever to click on ads. They’re even smarter than just installing AdBlock. The advertising agreement with Microsoft was their last straw of good luck. If you see banner ads full of smilies, then you know that the ad inventory is way down the pits.
• Digg is slowing down. It’s not growing as fast as it used to be. It even dropped to Rank #129 from #90 on Alexa. And to think, the geeks, bloggers and webmaster that uses Digg would prolly have the Alexa toolbar on their browsers.
• Digg is losing the cool factor. Digg used to be uber-cool. Not anymore. Kevin Rose used to be the cool kid on the block. Not so much now. Way too many controversies have plagued the site and the association with Microsoft didn’t help either.

So, selling Digg now might be the best way out. But at $300 Million, I don’t think the big guys at the valley are ready to pony up that amount. And Digg has better hurry or else it might miss the money-train.