The Washington Post
The Washington Post Co.’s SocialCode social media advertising agency is hiring 15 members of Digg’s engineering staff, the company announced today. The company is not acquiring any of Digg’s technology, and the site is not closing, writes Hayley Tsukayama:
But members of Digg’s leadership team will be taking lead roles at SocialCode. Alan Lippman, who had been the social reader’s vice president of advertising products, will be the chief scientist at SocialCode. Will Larson, a software developer at Digg, will serve as Social Code’s director of engineering. SocialCode said that the developers will work on social marketing solutions.
SocialCode’s CEO is Laura O’Shaughnessy, daughter of Washington Post Co. chairman Don Graham (who also serves on Facebook’s board of directors).
“We’re proud to share that the Digg engineering team will be joining SocialCode,” wrote Digg CEO Matt Williams, who is not part of the move. “Joining SocialCode felt like a natural next step.”
Peter Kafka reported at the end of April that this move was imminent. As for what happens to the rest of Digg, Kafka wrote then, “given the fact that Digg has been looking for a buyer for months, it’s hard to see how they’ll be able to find another home for the remainder of the company.”
SocialCode launched in January 2011 as a Facebook marketing firm, offering “competitive analysis, application development, Page management, social commerce and fan monetization.” It has since expanded to Twitter, according to the news release:
Washington, DC – May 10, 2012 – SocialCode (www.socialcode.com), a leading provider of social media advertising and intelligence, and a subsidiary of The Washington Post Company (NYSE: WPO), today announced that it has hired several members of the engineering team at Digg.
“We are excited to have this exceptional team of developers join SocialCode and our mission of providing the most advanced social marketing solutions and insights for brands,” said Laura O’Shaughnessy, CEO of SocialCode. “Innovative technology is at the core of everything we do. This agreement marks the first of many planned moves, fueling SocialCode’s commitment to innovation and delivering leading-edge solutions to our clients.”
Joining SocialCode’s developer team in leadership roles will be Alan Lippman as Chief Scientist and Will Larson as Director of Engineering. Additional members of Digg’s engineering team will join SocialCode as developers as well.
As a pioneer of performance-based marketing on Facebook and Twitter, SocialCode provides global brands and their agencies with innovative advertising and intelligence solutions to help them understand and use social media platforms to further their business objectives. The new team members will join SocialCode’s existing development team to further develop solutions for clients.
The Digg.com domain, service and technology were not acquired by SocialCode.
