« Previous post
Next post »

August 12, 2007

Pligg, The Open Source Digg Clone, Put Up For Sale

Michael Arrington

75 comments »

Pligg, a controversial but popular open source content management system that lets developers quickly create Digg-like clones, has put itself up for sale.

Assets included in the sale are the domain name, website and control over the SourceForge account where people can download the current code.

In an email, Pligg says they have 10,000 registered users on the site and the software has been downloaded 60,000 times.

The Pligg community has grown larger than ever expected, with over 10,000 registered users sharing and trading tips, more than 60,000 Sourceforge downloads and 2 IRC rooms that are active 24/7. It’s become an extremely large project and community to manage. We all have day jobs and struggle to find enough time to keep up the pace. We’ve seen many online businesses develop products to support Pligg recently. Selling everything from custom templates and modules, to support and installation. This is a clear example that with the proper team in place, Pligg.com could easily dominate the other markets in this area. Pligg has even created a shop where users could purchase modules, templates and services. This feature hasn’t yet been launched though.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 12th, 2007 at 8:40 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Trackbacks/Pings (Trackback URL)

  1. Dev::Info

    August 12th, 2007 at 11:06 am

  2. Pligg Blog » Blog Archive » Pligg Opens Sale Negotiations

    August 12th, 2007 at 11:22 am

  3. Hitchhiker's Guide to 650

    August 12th, 2007 at 6:00 pm

  4. Metagg

    August 12th, 2007 at 6:43 pm

  5. meneame.net

    August 13th, 2007 at 7:28 am

  6. Social Bookmarks

    August 13th, 2007 at 3:15 pm

  7. document.write("Markus Tressl");

    August 15th, 2007 at 9:59 am

  8. HELM, WHM/cPanel, Windows, Linux and SEO Blog » Blog Archive » SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 13, 2007

    August 20th, 2007 at 2:05 pm

  9. » Largest Pligg Partner Defects After Announced Sale Tech Web Daily: Just another Tech News Blog

    August 22nd, 2007 at 6:03 am

  10. Pligg Opens Negotiations For Possible Sale | Pligg Modules

    September 28th, 2007 at 4:04 am

  11. Note to Pligg: You Can’t Sell SourceForge Accounts

    November 22nd, 2007 at 2:39 pm


  12. December 31st, 2007 at 10:54 pm

Comments

RSS feed for comments on this post.

  1. Indian Videos

    August 12th, 2007 at 8:55 am

    Pligg is wonderful. (Even with its bugs)
    Drupal community should buy Pligg and convert it into a single module. Users can then add all the ‘digg’ features to their site just by enabling pligg module.

  2. Ali

    August 12th, 2007 at 9:13 am

    The CMS itself has progressed quite a bit and the community behind it is really helpful.

    I hope they sell to the right guys.

  3. peter groth

    August 12th, 2007 at 9:44 am

    Pligg Rocks, and I use it everday.

    Ashdigg, kbeeveer46, and ChuckRoast have done a fantastic job. I hope the new owners offer them jobs with pligg. These 3 are really the heart of pligg.

  4. drew olanoff

    August 12th, 2007 at 9:50 am

    this is pretty interesting. pligg was actually fun to setup and use. i think if the community continues to grow, they could be pretty big.

  5. Josh Buckley

    August 12th, 2007 at 9:56 am

    Pligg is great, i wouldn’t be surprised if it sells for a LOT

  6. Marco

    August 12th, 2007 at 10:18 am

    It’s funny. 2007 and only a few people are developing new things. Others just steal (no other word comes to my mind) ideas of others and try to make big money… As I first saw Pligg I thought it’s an alias domain to Digg.com. Even the design is the same… weird that Digg did not sue Pligg… not yet… lol

  7. Ben Strackany

    August 12th, 2007 at 10:32 am

    Interesting. I can imagine that running a popular FOSS platform for free starts could start to wear thin.

    I’m assuming that the actual software will remain open source, though. Or if it doesn’t, that someone will start up a fork. It’s not like the person who buys Pligg suddenly gets to extort money out of the current crop of Pligg sites.

    This sale also sounds like there might be a business opportunity for companies who specialize in installing, supporting, and customizing open source apps like Pligg. That’s a direction I’m thinking of going in, anyhow.

  8. Nerd Forum

    August 12th, 2007 at 10:32 am

    I’ve never heard of Pligg till now. For Digg’s sake, I hope it doesn’t sell for that much of a price, because the added publicity would really kill Digg.

  9. GoogTube

    August 12th, 2007 at 10:42 am

    @#9

    Why should other people limit their business for the sake of digg? If pligg sells for a lot and becomes even more popular that’s probably a good sign that digg isn’t that good and is probably over rated.

    In all honesty, I think if it wasn’t for the fact that most 15-22 year old boys have a crush on kevin rose digg wouldn’t be that popular anyway.

  10. RBA

    August 12th, 2007 at 11:08 am

    Mike, your first paragraph reads as if the CMS itself is for sale and someone could come out as the new owner a nice piece of Open Source software, but apparently that’s not the case. From what I read, only the domain+website+community and access to the sourceforge account are included in the price, not the CMS itself.

    People are going to bid on this, thiking they’d be buying a piece of software (Pligg, the CMS) and later realize the software itself is not for sale, and that could be a big bummer considering the minimum bid right now it’s $25K

  11. Francis, Infopirat

    August 12th, 2007 at 11:10 am

    @Indian Videos:

    Drupal has already modules to set up a social news /bookmarking plattform and it is great! We tested pligg but it was too buggy. No problems with Drupal.

  12. Live Pro

    August 12th, 2007 at 11:31 am

    Pligg is not powerful enough as a CMS, we can get better experience by choosing modified Drupal.


  13. August 12th, 2007 at 11:44 am

    To clear up the code questions. We would transfer the SVN account to any potential bidders. Control of future Pligg releases would be up to you and it would be your decision to continue to release it under the Pligg name. Licensing limits us from selling the code so that’s why access to the code would given to you on top of purchasing the domain which includes the entire website and forum/community.

  14. AW

    August 12th, 2007 at 11:44 am

    From the forums:

    “bidders would have RIGHTS to the code …”

    Meaning they could relicense the next, unreleased version of Pligg to be closed source as the new copyright holders.

  15. John Michailidis

    August 12th, 2007 at 11:47 am

    Probably a good thing in that increased funding will help Pligg to get even better and expand its user base.

  16. RBA

    August 12th, 2007 at 11:49 am

    AW, I don’t think so.

    Pligg is based on Meneame, and the Meneame license prohibits from doing exactly what you’re saying. Basically, because Pligg is based on Meneame (Affero license), you cannot close the code nor sell it.

    If Pligg had been a project started from scratch, what you say might be true, but this is not the case.


  17. August 12th, 2007 at 12:03 pm

    RBA, Pligg has grown a lot in the past year and a half and there is very little meneame code left. No where in the Affero license does it say that you can’t sell the code. Affero is based off of GNU GPL and it’s upward compatible with v3. Affero is the GPL with one extra paragraph. You’re allowed to sell GPL’ed software. Anyways, we’re not selling the code. Access to the code comes with the domain and website.

    The entire point if this is so Pligg can grow even larger than it is today. Since we currently don’t have the manpower to do this we are letting someon else come in. It would be to their advantage to use the current code and community to produce profits by advertising, support etc.

  18. RBA

    August 12th, 2007 at 12:27 pm

    Yes #17, you can sell GPL’d software. My fault I used the word “sell” not in the sense of “people can pay for your work” but in the sense of ownership, as a response to comment #15 that claims you could make the code proprietary amd become a copyright holder.

    I believe what’s for sale here can be a great asset if it goes to the right hands, but I also feel that some people simply don’t understand it. Would you like the project/site to fall into the wrong hands simply because they misunderstood what they’re getting if they win the bid? Think about it.

  19. Geoffrey Arone

    August 12th, 2007 at 12:57 pm

    You know, if you drop the “L” in pligg, you can make a digg porn clone called “pigg”!

  20. Darren Stuart

    August 12th, 2007 at 12:59 pm

    If I had the spare cash I would buy it and then spend some money on making it a better product. I think dotnetnuke model is the perfect model for this.

    I think the buyer has to beware not to annoy the community because all you need is some core users to fork the code and create a popular competing product (AKA Mambo).

  21. Jmmy

    August 12th, 2007 at 1:02 pm

    Mike, you have stop putting cuban cigar in your mouth. By colorful character — Give me reason why Journalist smoke?

    Are you anti venture capitalist?

  22. bruce

    August 12th, 2007 at 1:28 pm

    Another great site up for sale.

  23. Otis Gospodnetic

    August 12th, 2007 at 1:51 pm

    Pligg.com should look into exposing more about its traffic, perhaps via
    http://www.quantcast.com/pligg.com
    or
    http://siteanalytics.compete.com/pligg.com (hmm, nice growth there!)

  24. Andy Fox

    August 12th, 2007 at 2:47 pm

    looks like a lot of these comments are from people at pligg trying to hype it up. Ok, bump.

  25. willi

    August 12th, 2007 at 3:53 pm

    Wow dnscoop has these guys valued at $2,221,760

    I’m betting it will go for around 1.3 million

  26. AgentB

    August 12th, 2007 at 4:20 pm

    Sad news - best of luck with the sale fellow pliggers!

  27. Jeff

    August 12th, 2007 at 5:12 pm

    I tried pligg to build our site, but the bugs are annoying and the templates are horrible, I was going to get a template built, but used phpdugg instead, I spent the template money on a coder to get the features (mostly admin) that I wanted.

    I wanted something really simple, less features, easier to use.

    Check it out if you like…..

    http://zoowise.com

  28. startupflames.com

    August 12th, 2007 at 5:23 pm

    who and why would anyone actually buy the project? The code is open source anyway and the community isn’t rally that large.

  29. Brad

    August 12th, 2007 at 5:33 pm

    It’s a great concept but without the community it’s not worth that much.

  30. Pligg-Templates.com

    August 12th, 2007 at 7:38 pm

    Best of luck to the Pligg developers. Pligg is a great system.

  31. Pligg User

    August 12th, 2007 at 7:54 pm

    This is great news. If Pligg sells for a lot, maybe someone else would come in a do a similar project that is not a buggy piece of junk.

  32. Reader

    August 12th, 2007 at 8:30 pm

    It’s not a coincidence that Facebook’s php source is leaked and pligg is for sale at the same time…. Pacebooks will be available for a beta test in a near future.

  33. David Mackey

    August 12th, 2007 at 8:49 pm

    What’s the price?

  34. Simon

    August 12th, 2007 at 8:58 pm

    If Pligg’s founders are smart they’d keep the company and raise money to unify the users of subsesquent developers - i.e. white label it. They could have the ‘Ning’ of ‘Diggs’ :)

  35. RBA

    August 12th, 2007 at 9:59 pm

    Simon, that has already been done :-) (click on the RBA thingy above), just not with Pligg. And I believe I saw not long ago some project somewhere doing what you’re suggesting anyway.

  36. Ben Werdmuller

    August 13th, 2007 at 1:14 am

    This actually is worth something; Pligg has generated a name for itself in certain circles, and the ability to say that something is supported by the people behind it is a business model in itself. It’s not the same as a commercial software model, but it does have its own rewards and potential for serious financial success.

  37. finddesign

    August 13th, 2007 at 3:37 am

    pligg is not worth

    it started as an English translation of http://www.meneame.net
    and that community started to ask for more, more and more features and now is a mess. it is slow, unusable and ugly

    in my opinion there’s no point to buy pligg.

    if you want to buy “users” there are better choices
    if you want to buy a “digg clone” you can use the source code for free
    if you want to buy a “domain”, think a bit and do it (14U$D a year)

    #13 and #17: what are you looking for?
    you say you don’t have time to spend on pligg because you have day-jobs, but if you sell it for big money, you’ll not need the day-jobs anymore and nor taking care of pligg… sounds strange for me.

    if Pligg business model is worth, it should allow you to hire someone or even work on it full-time.

    why should someone buy a product (website, users and business model) if it can’t even generate enough income to hire a bunch of geek-monkeys to run it?

    I’m sorry, I don’t understand it.


  38. August 13th, 2007 at 4:03 am

    David,

    It’s up for bidding at Sedo.com

  39. Yusuf Motiwala

    August 13th, 2007 at 4:43 am

    I wonder who would be interested in buying Pligg which is full of bugs and code is already available for download. Sometime back, we evaluated Pligg to build a digg clone for an internal use and we found it to be unsuitable for any production website. Few details here:

    http://blog.motiwala.com/2007/.....digg-clone

  40. Mohan

    August 13th, 2007 at 5:12 am

    Check out:
    “Drupaligg: The Open Source Digg/Reddit Clone using PHP based Drupal”: http://www.programmingbulls.co.....en-source- diggreddit-clone-using-php-b The demo is available at: http://drupaligg.programmingbulls.com/

  41. Mohan

    August 13th, 2007 at 5:13 am

    “Drupaligg: The Open Source Digg/Reddit Clone using PHP based Drupal”: http://www.programmingbulls.co.....sing-php-b The demo is available at: http://drupaligg.programmingbulls.com/

  42. Entdecken

    August 13th, 2007 at 5:15 am

    Don’t forget the backlinks that pligg.com has. For some people it may be worth paying a minimum of $25,000

  43. BelgaBlog

    August 13th, 2007 at 5:38 am

    Pligg is an easy tool to set up a “share & vote” system. Takes you about 30 minutes to set up the technical part.

    What takes more time is the look and feel. There are only few templates available, and better design your own template, as we did. What do you think of:

    http://www.bligg.be

    Thanks Pligg!

  44. MSolution

    August 13th, 2007 at 5:49 am

    This will go huge $$$ , pity its up for sale,
    well lets see who acquires this one!

    M.

  45. Thomas

    August 13th, 2007 at 7:17 am

    They should just be looking for a couple folks on the business side, and go get some funding. This is the developers’ way of raising money.

  46. DZPM

    August 13th, 2007 at 7:32 am

    Don’t forget that Pligg uses Meneame’s code, which is free software.
    So Pligg code will remain free forever, thanks to the Affero License.

    So, why to buy the code when you can get it for free? It can’t be hijacked by any single person/company!

  47. ***V***

    August 13th, 2007 at 8:34 am

    Pligg is a great script with quite a few supporters. I hope this is sold to the right people.

  48. affisch

    August 13th, 2007 at 9:27 am

    what would you get buying pligg? sorry but I don’t really get it. ok, now there’s much more hype for all internet/web applications and apparently the big guys are out there always trying to buy new interesting companies, but let’s be serious, compared to the pre-bubble period of the late 90s, now the bottom-line is at point 1 of every business evaluation…

  49. The Buxr Widget

    August 13th, 2007 at 10:49 am

    I was actually one of the first donors to the Pligg project. I think they’ve done a great job.. Hopefully they’ll make some cash.

  50. Not worth it

    August 13th, 2007 at 2:23 pm

    Pligg? Not worth investing any time in. At some point you just can’t rely on the framework to scale into a real site or to offer you the level of customization an original idea would require. Been there, done that, watched it fail even with a pretty savvy developer putting things together.

    The community on the other hand might be valuable. Different discussion - important not to confuse the two.

  51. Sammy

    August 13th, 2007 at 3:42 pm

    I agree that Pligg is buggy, but still very nice piece of software. I was able to set up my site within a single night. I do wish they had focused more on the core coding and not so much on all of the bells and whistles that make it somewhat unstable.

  52. Adrian Bashford

    August 13th, 2007 at 3:59 pm

    I would have called it Frigg, but that is just me. :)

  53. tchmks

    August 13th, 2007 at 8:38 pm

    BelgaBlog:
    Yes, Pligg is nice. And it need not take that much time.
    You can set up Pligg sites in 30 seconds at http://www.mobengines.com !

  54. jefferson

    August 14th, 2007 at 7:22 am

    i used pligg to build up a site and have to say that it was pretty simple and straight forward, the lack of templates is disappointing so you are stuck trying to figure out what is what when trying to do your own design.
    Unfortunately everyone just thinks of you as a digg clone and you get slagged.

    None the less ill plug my pligg site here http://www.audiobump.com its what digg would be if it had a music tab.

    Custom flash mp3 module.

  55. Joe Duck

    August 14th, 2007 at 9:38 am

    Is Pligg yet another example of a “very successful” 2.0 project that can’t even make enough to keep the owners fat and happy and retire them early? After reading Don Dodge’s mini-analysis of how it appears most VCs are *losing* money on startups I’m wondering if online companies are sort of like Arabian Horse breeding where money is usually lost but people are so enthusiastic and wrapped up in it all that we all keep chugging along, hoping for the big payoff.

  56. OOM

    August 15th, 2007 at 12:46 pm

    I hate each and every clone that hopes to get the success the original had. And it isn’t even good for the progress.

    What if, instead of trying to come up with new, original projects, everyone would just clone the others.

    This being said, I do admit that sometimes, some clones can be useful.

  57. Suphkorn

    August 16th, 2007 at 11:31 pm

    They’re want to sell, and how about registered user? Are they including the user?

  58. DigiMoe.com

    August 19th, 2007 at 9:51 pm

    This surprise me…

  59. Andix

    August 21st, 2007 at 2:11 pm

    Pligg is great. It is a bit buggy, but much easier to set up and manage than Drupal. Most of the bugs we fixed in 2 days for our site.

  60. Ken Zhao

    August 22nd, 2007 at 9:20 am

    This surprise me too.. you made a bad decision.

  61. Hosting

    August 22nd, 2007 at 11:51 pm

    So, what’s the latest - has Pligg been sold yet?

  62. HM2K

    August 23rd, 2007 at 11:11 am

    This is very lame, I worked on pligg.

    Surly they can’t sell the source code… It’s public property…

  63. WomanSeeks

    August 29th, 2007 at 3:35 pm

    HM2K> exactly, how to sell something which everyone can copy and mofify for free. Also if you want to create your own digg clone, it is one week of php programming.

    This is my result - http://www.womanseeks.com

« Previous post
Next post »