Ballhype and Showhype, two Digg clones focusing on sport and pop culture respectively have sold for $3 million, according to Louis Gray and others.

My initial reaction when visiting the sites was “OMG, Pligg installs” but a quick search of Google quickly changed my tune to “OMG, custom built Digg clones built on Django.” Still, $3 million for a pair of sites that just scrape into the Alexa top 10,000 is an utterly brilliant deal, not only for the site creators but for anyone who has dreamed of building their own Digg…and to be honest I never thought I’d see the day. The long tail is not only wagging, its screaming and kicking, and it has tangible value once it hits a certain point, and a point that perhaps traditionally isn’t as high as many would expect.

The sale also has implications in the meme tracking space. From what I’ve read the IP behind Ballhype also takes into account incoming links on stories, so it’s part memetracker, part Digg. Congrats to the team behind the site, and no doubt we’ll see more movement in this space now as other can see that exits can be made reinventing the wheel.