Content-sharing site Digg has obtained funding from Highland Capital Funding (HCF), which it will use for a “major expansion effort,” Digg CEO Jay Adelson announced in his Digg Blog.

The US$28.7 million investment will help Digg expand the site on a global scale, Wired.com reported. Furthermore, the company intends to optimise its recommendation system, to develop category and topic views, as well as to improve content organisation.

“With a new round of funding, we're accelerating many of the programmes that we've been working on over the past several months, including investments in infrastructure, new feature development, international expansion and hiring all the people we need to get there,” Adelson wrote in his blog.

More than half of Digg's 30 million monthly unique users come from outside the United States, which is why the site will be focusing on making itself “more relevant to local tastes, including local languages,” Adelson stated. The world-wide expansion project will begin early next year, he added. Community outreach programmes and more advanced tools and interfaces for publishers will also be a part of the initiative.

HCF's investment may put an end to rumours that the site will be acquired by Google or Microsoft, according to Wired.com.

"We have only completed about 15 percent of all the ideas that we have. I don't think anyone could offer us a better deal than us going alone," Adelson wrote.