Silicon Alley Insider has a tipster claiming that a collaboration of some sort between Ask.com and Digg is nearing launch. This would seem to substantiate the claim from a couple of months ago in Valleywag that Digg was working on a white-label version of the site with IAC (Ask’s parent).

Very little is known about the collaboration but the speculation is that it could be some sort of generic version of Digg built around Ask. This would normally mean nothing as there are dozens of Digg rip-offs out there in every field, except that if this one actually had the Digg branding, it could carry some weight – similar to Reddit’s recently added ability for users to create their own ‘Reddits’.

Perhaps Digg is borrowing a page from Reddit’s idea and allowing for the building of branded Diggs – only they may be taking a much more hands-on and corporate approach. Rather than letting any user create their own Digg, they may partner up with companies and sites to help them build their own version.

More interesting would be if Ask tries to make a Digg-based search engine of some sort. This would seem to be very much similar to a test Google was working on a few months ago. That however was only meant to serve individual users better results based on their likings and dislikings, this could be much more meaningful if it were an attempt at a full-scale social voting search idea.

Yahoo was testing out implementing del.icio.us data into their search results before the whole Microsoft hostile buyout fiasco happened. This Ask/Digg collaboration may be an even bigger step into social search. Or it could just be the first Digg-backed Digg knock-off.

[UPDATE 2/6]: Here’s the collaboration: a news aggregator called BigNews with Digg elements and integration built-in. You can read my review/thoughts about it at VentureBeat.