The news of these potential sales was made public via a Geeknet press release, which spells out the motivations behind the idea. Naturally, it’s all about money:

Ken Langone, Chairman and CEO of Geeknet, stated, “After much discussion, our management team and Board of Directors have decided to begin a formal review of our media business to realize the full potential of these valuable assets and maximize shareholder value. With more than 46 million total unique visitors last month, our media properties have a large community of engaged users and we are committed to creating the best online experience for them.”

While Geeknet’s properties may have been reduced to more of a niche site, with their high popularity days seemingly behind them, as the statement shows, they still draw respectable amounts of traffic. Furthermore, Slashdot still maintains a consistent amount of input from users that have stayed the course the with news aggregate/forum-based commenting system.

When you consider Digg’s fate after Kevin Rose exited with money in his pocket, the idea of these properties changing hands is almost unfortunate.

That’s not to say the potential new owners will gut these services by favoring content from big-name publications instead of relying on user submissions, but then again, considering the aftermath of Digg, it’s understandable where there would be apprehension from the loyal users. Furthermore, when you consider these properties are still viable, traffic-wise (46 million uniques in April), such a change in ownership could cause massive defections, perhaps to the waiting arms of Reddit.

As pointed out by TheNextWeb, despite these good traffic numbers, Geeknet lost money:

Earlier this month, the company announced financial results for the first quarter of 2012. During the quarter, Geeknet booked revenues of $22.3 million, compared to $19.9 million in Q1, 2011. However, the company posted a net loss of $2.1 million.

With that in mind, does it make sense for Geeknet to cut their loses and make whatever money they can from these still-popular web properties? If so, how does the idea of Slashdot, SourceForge, and Freecode being under new ownership strike you?

Today the Digg Blog reports that indeed Digg’s engineers have left to join a subsidiary of the Washington Post. They will be working on projects at SocialCode, a site dedicated to helping advertisers build communities and get more value from social media.

Here’s what they had to say on the Digg Bog:

“At Digg, we have been studying social media since its inception. From Digg Social Reader to Digg Ads, we established a new paradigm for content and advertising on the web. Joining SocialCode felt like a natural next step.”

The Digg engineers will be joining with the existing SocialCode team and be working out of their offices in San Francisco, Seattle, and D.C., but there’s still no official word on what will happen to the Digg site. We’ll keep you posted as new things happen over at Digg.

The Next Web initially reported that the Washington Post was buying Digg and TechCrunch seemed to believe it some sort of acquisition also, but now, All Things D claims that the Washington Post just wants Digg’s tech team.

Apparently Digg’s not going under just yet. The remaining members will be left struggling with the same issue they have been struggling with; how to keep the viewers and do something new with the site. The once hot startup has been on its way out since the deal with Google fizzled out some time ago.

There is no official word from Digg yet, but it doesn’t seem like they have any cards left to play.We will keep you posted as new information about Digg or what’s going on at the Washington Post becomes available.

Twitter Reacts to Digg’s Tech Team Leaving:

The graphic reports a startling eleven year average shelf life for the online empires involved and calls into question the numbered days left for Facebook in particular. It has been eight years since the social networking giant its popular site, and whether it shows signs of slowing down or not, past experience might prove to be more valid for prediction the future.

Does Facebook have what it takes to persevere where others have failed? Some think it does, but you can predict what path you believe it will take after studying this next infographic. Enjoy:

AllThingsD got the exclusive that had sources saying Rose was hired by Google just today. The move doesn’t see Google acquiring his company, Milk, but the company will be hiring the rest of the Milk team.

It seems that the deal was just too sweet to pass up as Rose and the Milk team will each receive $1 to $2 million each. Investors in Milk will also get their money back along with a little something extra.

The move seems to have Google rescuing Milk from a future of non-hits, even though Oink was only their first app that attempted to ignite the market. AllThingsD speculates that Google will be utilizing Rose’s experience in social media to help grow its Google+ platform.

We reached out to Google and they declined to comment, saying they had nothing to share at this time. For now, we’ll just have to wait until Google gets everything in order and makes the official announcement.

Twitter reactions are always the best when it comes to these kind of hirings and acquisitions. Let’s see how it looks, shall we?

What do you think of the hire? Was it a good move for Google? Let us know in the comments.

According to Rose, the new service had tracked hundreds of thousands of Oinks and had over 40,000 active users. Oink allowed users to rate and rank things. Rose and the Milk team called the app a ratings engine for the things inside, not just the places on the web. The Oink app was all about gathering data.

Critics are wondering how users may respond to the quick closing of the app since it was so focused on data gathering and hope users won’t be apprehensive to try any new apps from Milk. There will be plenty of questions for Kevin next month when he will be at The Next Web Conference 2012 in Amsterdam.

Digg Social Reader, the Facebook app version, has quadrupled in membership since it’s December inception.

According to today’s blog post, Digg is now marrying the two. You can now log onto the Social Reader from the Dig iOS app and share stories you Digg on your Facebook Timeline and News Feed.

Here are some killer screen-caps; with the app you have the option to share your stories or not:

In the application settings menu you can choose how you want the stories to look on your Facebook Timeline and manage your Facebook posts.

As always, follow top Diggs on Twitter:

A few days ago, there were reports circulating that Digg had lost 50% of its U.S. traffic over the last six months. This was based on data from Quantcast.

Digg has now put up a blog post saying that this is not the case. They provided a screen cap of their visitors overview from Google Analytics.

You can see that they have over 17 million unique visitors for October. You can also see that visitors are on the way up since August.

Digg’s Ben Fork-Williams says, “Note this is worldwide traffic; visits from the United States over this period are consistently 50% (49.57% in October).” He then shares the following stats:

• Digg Newsrooms have been in beta for a month, and page views per visit are up 3x versus classic Digg.
• Higher engagement from Facebook fans, with users coming from Facebook spending an average of 15 minutes on site as compared to 10 minutes for other logged in users.
• 23% increase in daily users on mobile since the launch of Digg’s revised iOS app with Newsroom integration.
• 51% of Digg traffic is direct.
• 13 million times every month someone types Digg.com into a browser.

When I look at Digg these days, I still see interesting content, and at its core, that’s really what it’s all about. It still fulfills that function. The Digg counts on these articles don’t really mean that much to me. Whether there is an article with 3 Diggs or one with 200, I’m still seeing a wide range of interesting links that I may not have otherwise seen, and there is value to that. That doesn’t mean I can’t look at Reddit or StumbleUpon as well.

The point its, Digg is not dead, and there is plenty of room for a lot of content discovery sites. Mobile, as illustrated by that stat the company shared, is a key to this too. It’s easier to find time for all of this content discovery when you have access to it in your pocket at all times.

“We’ve been hearing a lot about how Kevin Rose is launching something new,” writes CEO Matt Williams on the company blog.  ”Everyone knows Kevin is an entrepreneur at heart, and he’s had many projects in the works over the past several years. We’re excited to see what he comes up with next. Kevin continues to be committed to Digg’s success; his role as founder, Board member, and Diggnation host remains unchanged.”

Williams took Rose’s place as CEO last summer after Rose filled in for ex-CEO Jay Adelson. As for the death of Digg, Williams takes issue with that too. He writes:

Since hitting a low point toward the end of 2010, our traffic has stabilized, and we’ve seen site engagement increase significantly: Diggs up 20%, time on site up 20%, and the total number of comments submitted per day is up nearly 50%. These strong numbers reflect both the passion of the Digg community and the tireless work of our engineering team.

Longtime Digg users have been overwhelmingly positive about our ongoing improvements. All told, we still have close to 20M monthly unique visitors worldwide, just about 1M unique visitors each day. We also have over 6M registered users, growing by hundreds of thousands each month. Depending on your favorite measurement service, Digg is ranked in the top 100-150 U.S. web sites, and our traffic puts us as one of the top news web sites in the world.

Williams also hinted at future plans for Digg. He didn’t get into the specifics of the direction the site will take, but it sounds like some new personalization features might be in store. Williams said, “We must head toward a future where the crowdsourced view can be combined with news pertaining to your own interests and news shared within your own social circles.”

Of course many people are already getting their news from this way from services that utilize Twitter and Facebook. It will be interesting to see what Digg does to compete going forward.

On the Digg About blog, Williams explained, "The fact is our business has a burn rate that is too high.  We must significantly cut our expenses to achieve profitability in 2011.  We’ve considered all of the possible options for reduction, from salaries to fixed costs.  The result is that, in addition to lowering many of our operational costs, I’ve made the decision to downsize our staff from 67 to 42 people."

This is a scary sign for Digg (and Digg fans), as that’s a big cut and almost bound to have a significant effect on something.  It’s unlikely that 25 employees held the title "pencil sharpener," after all.

One important note is that everyone affected by the move should have some help getting another job, though.  Williams pledged, "I’m personally committed to help find new opportunities for everyone affected by the transition.  Digg’s Board members have also offered to help find placements within their portfolio companies."

And losing 37 percent of its employees should allow Digg to save quite a lot of money, so it’s perhaps not time to order a virtual tombstone for the company just yet.

Williams wrote, "Let’s please use today to show our sincere appreciation for our friends and colleagues who will be moving on.  Tomorrow, we’ll go forward with a new strategy for Digg."