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Kevin Rose Resigns From Digg, Closing Round On New Startup
- olivercameron 16y agoJust as Digg seemed to be on a slight up, this happens. Perhaps the last nail in the coffin? Hopefully he is re-kindling the idea of Pownce: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pownce http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pownce
- ojbyrne 16y agoPersonally I think it's the best thing that could happen. Digg has been roundly defeated by low-profile engineering companies (reddit and stumbleupon). In my opinion that was almost entirely because of their cult of personality approach. I don't think Kevin was even comfortable with it. It's been looking up because they've already abandoned that. This just confirms it.
- DiggEmployee2 16y agoKevin has not been actively involved with Digg for months. The slight up has had nothing to do with him and his official resignation will make no difference
- olivercameron 16y agoThat's good news, then! Rooting for Digg, it has a special place in this scene.
- Stormbringer 16y agoDigg is on an up? Are you sure? I just went to the front page, and the stories there had a total of 126 comments. How is that an 'up'?
- protomyth 16y agoIs there an actual link to a source other than the TechCrunch article?
- ajays 16y agoI'm reminded of the BW cover: http://scrapetv.com/News/News%20Pages/Technology/images/kevin-rose-business-week.jpg http://scrapetv.com/News/News%20Pages/Technology/images/kevi... My, how times have changed.
- dusing 16y agoKevin is still a smart guy and he does have good ideas, digg just got out of control and suffered from some bad timing. Now Kevin will be free to really prove his worth again. I'm excited to see what he does.
- blantonl 16y agosorry, but there is no such thing as bad-timing, only bad-leadership. And digg becoming "out of control" was the result of bad leadership. Frankly, if I had to evaluate Kevin as a leader, I would give a big thumbs down. There is no doubt he has enormous abilities as a visionary. But, Visionary != Execution.
- ctingom 16y agoMan, that earthquake in Japan was sure bad leadership.
- Stormbringer 16y agoI'm sorry, but using an ongoing tragedy with thousands of dead people as a way of 'scoring points' in some little battle of the debating geeks strikes me as at best enormously insensitive and in bad taste.
- jeremymims 16y agoSorry, Digg executed their way to a top 100 website. Right now it's number 111 in Quantcast. How do you define success?
- 16y ago
- staunch 16y agoHe should merge Revision3 with Leo Laporte's TWiT network and go for the gold.
- dusing 16y agoThe combination of live conversation style TWiT shows and the highly produced Rev3 stuff would really be unstoppable.
- nkassis 16y agoI'm puzzled by why they haven't teamed up. I was under the impression they had a good time during the screen savers.
- jonursenbach 16y agoLast I remember, Kevin no longer has any involvement at Rev3.
- nabilt 16y agoI'm not sure Rev3 and TWIT should merge. TWIT seems to focus more on niche tech topics like Security Now and Floss Weekly so they can build a relatively small loyal following. Rev3 seems to be going for the mass market, which is why they produce lots of movie and game review shows. Rev3 is more like G4 while TWIT is more like TechTV.
- dusing 16y agoTWiT has a lot of air time to spare on produced content. You mention two of the least watched TWiT shows... They are more defined by This week in, Macbreak, and iPad numbers wise
- btucker 16y agoIt's a little weird, isn't it? At least in public, Leo has always been exceptionally kind to Kevin & I think he was a very influential in Kevin's development. Yet Kevin has never seemed interested in teaming up and I always wondered if Leo wasn't a little hurt by that.
- Andrex 16y agoEnd of an era.
- city41 16y agoI really like this news. the whole world has watched Digg go down in flames over the past year or so. It had to be at least a little embarrassing for Rose. It's refreshing to see someone that public pick up the pieces, move on, and try again.
- reason 16y agoKevin Rose usually gets a lot of crap about Digg when posts about him show up. And you know, sure, Digg might be considered a tragedy to some (which, come on, really isn't), but I really, really respect the guy. He really helped usher in the social web era, as neither a designer or a coder, mind you. He hustled his site using the opportunities at hand, raised tons of money, got shot to be on covers of some really huge magazines, and probably had a ridiculously fun time through it all. If you listen to some of his videos, it's easy to see that he's got lots of big ideas, and he's put himself in a position to make it happen (again, without bringing any technical skills to the table, which, I think, is impressive and speaks to his ability to inspire people). If you look at his about.me/kevinrose, you'll find that he's also an investor in lots of really popular services, and he's well-connected with the best of the best in the valley. So, props to Kevin. He's done some big things (Digg, Revision3), other smaller ones (Pownce, WeFollow), and seems to be onto others. I certainly would love to be in his position.
- bkudria 16y agoAccidental downvote, sorry! You make a good point of course.
- aaronbrethorst 16y agoAccording to his Wikipedia article, he spent some time at UNLV pursuing a Computer Science degree (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Rose#Early_life http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Rose#Early_life)
- ido 16y agoDid he make so little money from digg that he needs to raise funding to get $1m for his new start-up?
- pmjordan 16y agoStartups are (very) high-risk investments. I doubt he's quite that wealthy that $1m is peanuts to him, so taking outside investment seems like a good idea.
- Zev 16y agoYou typically get more than cash when you raise a round of funding.
- dusing 16y agoWhat cash has he made from digg? What is his share of the company now?
- raganwald 16y agoEven if he can afford to do the whole thing himself, remember the old adage: If you need advice, ask for money. If you need money, ask for advice. He may have raised money specifically to bring in some investors who can contribute some wisdom and experience.
- Stormbringer 16y agoThere's a thing that happens a lot with tech company growth stocks. Digg is a case in point, where they grow fast, and on the way up they get several offers, but they keep holding out for more and more... until suddenly their exponential growth crashes to a halt, and the big offers suddenly dry up. The trick is to sell on the way up, not when you're at the top. You're at 'the top' for such a vanishingly small period of time that the odds of selling at the perfect time are vanishingly small. I seem to recall Digg over the years while it was still growing getting (and knocking back) offers of 30, 60, and ~100 million before the famous Google 200 fell through. I understand the urge to push hard and get everything you can for a deal, but if at $200 million the other guy feels that there's nothing in it for him, that it is strictly break even, then maybe at the last minute the deal falls through, and you kick yourself a year later for not selling at $180MM or even $150MM. Yes, you should negotiate hard, but you should always leave something on the table for the other guy. Even if you're completely screwing him over a barrel, you should still leave him something for him to brag about to his buddies or board of directors or journos.
- nkassis 16y agoWhy are they comparing twitter to digg? It's not at all the same thing. I mean, twitter is like drinking from a fire hose, no curation at all just tons of stuff being dumped. Digg was more like sink water, decently cleaned can be enjoyed all the time. Reddit is more like good spring water (you can pick the spring you want too, depending on your mood) and HN is Evian water ;p Again you don't use fire hose for the same thing you'd use water from the sink. It's complementary.
- m0nastic 16y agoI would argue that both Reddit and Digg are like drinking from the Ganges river; in that the amount of shittiness is related to where along the source you decide to drink from.
- jedberg 16y agoI love this, and am sharing it with the rest of team reddit right now. Thank you.
- dpcan 16y agoYour analogy lost me ;) but I too didn't understand the twitter comparison. I sometimes feel like the TC folks live, eat, sleep, breathe, and shit twitter all day long, and their perspective is much different. Maybe for them it is the source of all that matters? I don't know. I go to twitter when I wonder, what are others saying about X?
- staunch 16y agoKevin Rose needed a Sean Parker to help him maintain board control and guide him.
- vessenes 16y agoMaybe. Digg is also old enough it was structured and architectured under an old-school (You need at least 15 to 30 engineers) approach for a content site. In that way, it was a sort of bridge to what we've got now -- it got the social crowd-sourcing of content part together, but it didn't have the minimal engineer part together. You can bet that getting the money to pay all those guys, who then needed sales guys to make the big sales to pay them and the engineers, who then ... contributed significantly to Digg losing its place in the world. I betcha that the new startup has significantly tighter hiring policies.
- ddelony 16y agoIf there are "multiple sources", wouldn't it be possible to name them?
- cduruk 16y agoDigg's CEO Matt Williams responded on Digg comments about this: http://digg.com/news/business/kevin_rose_resigns_from_digg_closing_round_on_new_startup/20110318233453:ae8c984ad504485598461a8db7d0f86c#20110318233453:ae8c984ad504485598461a8db7d0f86c http://digg.com/news/business/kevin_rose_resigns_from_digg_c... Disclaimer: I work at Digg.
- c00p3r 16y agoLet me guess - something like Cassandra + Clojure? ^_^
- mkramlich 16y agohis next startup? I'm calling it now: Dug.com
- kasperset 16y agoReddit down to one developer and Kevin Rose resigns from Digg. This sounds like a recipe.
- nikcub 16y agomuchos props to krose. he has put up with a lot of shit from people and handles it really well. pioneer in the space. he should write a book! (and then a movie) i'm looking forward to the business week headline covering this