SAN FRANCISCO - Digg, a popular news-sharing website, announced major expansion plans on Wednesday - hiring more staff, rolling out new products and launching services in languages besides English.

Digg (digg.com), which has reportedly been coveted by Internet behemoths such as Microsoft and Google, announced the moves after receiving investment from venture capitalists of 28.7 million dollars.

In a statement, Digg, which was launched as a start-up four years ago, said it would double its staff over the next year to more than 150 employees and move to a larger corporate headquarters in San Francisco by December 2009.

The company would accelerate product and feature rollouts, expand into other languages and come up with new ways to present the more than 16,000 stories and items submitted to the site everyday by users, known as "Diggers," it said.

Diggers submit stories to the site and the items are ranked by popularity or interest. Many leading news websites provide a link asking readers whether they want to "Digg" a story.

"In just four years, the Digg community has grown into a globally diverse group of people who have a common passion to discover and share entertaining and relevant content," said Digg's chief executive Jay Adelson.

"This round of funding allows us to accelerate that momentum and build the team to deliver features that will continue to change the way people consume content on the web," he said.

Digg said traffic to the site has doubled over the past year to more than 30 million unique visitors a month.

The company said advertising revenue had nearly tripled over the same period but as a privately-held company it is not required to release figures. - AFP/ra