WaPo Confirms Hiring Digg Engineers

The Washington Post Co. Thursday confirmed the hiring of Digg’s engineering team for its social media advertising and analytics subsidiary SocialCode. The company is bringing on a total of 15 Digg engineers including Alan Lippman, who will join SocialCode as chief scientist, and Will Larson, as director of engineering.

At the same time, WaPo emphasized it was not acquiring Digg.com domain, service or technology, despite acquisition rumors that arose last week when the defection of the Digg engineering group was first reported. In a blog post Thursday morning, Digg CEO Matt Williams acknowledged the loss of technical staffers but provided little insight into the company’s future direction.

Digg is said to be looking for a buyer after steadily losing ground in recent years to competitors like Reddit and Twitter. Kevin Rose, who founded the one-time social media darling, has since joined Google. Williams gave no indication, however, that Digg plans to shut down, closing his message by telling readers to “Stay tuned and keep Digging.”

The company declined to comment beyond Williams' post today.

Despite speculation, The Washington Post itself reported today the Digg team was not joining WaPo Labs, the division responsible for products such as Trove and the Post’s Social Reader app. SocialCode focuses on helping companies to market their products and services through Facebook and Twitter.

The Digg team will be integrated with SocialCode’s existing engineering staff in San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C.

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