Kevin 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.
1. Silverorange came on board and made a beautiful design.
2. We jumped all over this cool new thing called "Ajax," though really we were on it when it was still XMLHttpRequest.
Humbly, I think I deserve credit for 2 at digg. I didn't invent ajax, but I was kind of enthusiastic about it back in 2005, enough to make it work for us.
Yeah I remember fleeing to Kuro5hin for a while when it appeared Slashdot was first "degrading", back in the late 90's. I don't think K5 ever got really attractive enough for me to stick with them for very long. I then had a pretty long gap in my "uber-nerd website addiction feeding" department until I discovered HN.
Digg showed a lot of people that crowd-sourced editorial curation could work. While Digg certainly wasn't the first to do this, I think it was the first to reach a certain level of critical mass to make it an incredibly compelling news portal.
I think you raise one particularly good point in that while not everyone has the coding skills to make things many people have as you say "big" ideas. Bringing them to fruition by any means possible helps everyone as it brings the field forward. Digg started a trend of such sites and has in doing so made the web a better place to browse, even if the original site is no longer the best example.
I define success as continued successful execution.
Retaking the position of CEO, losing almost half of your traffic after spearheading a new release of the site, and then resigning and taking off for your new adventure hardly seems like a case of continued successful execution by a, well, successful CEO.
So far, I would tell you that Digg was flown straight into the ground.
I'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.
I was not really involved in the article but in the follow on book she put words in my mouth (presumably from someone else, but who knows) that I never said, without any attempt at verification.
In an ideal world, she should not be working. But hello, Techcrunch.
Yeah, totally. Though I think I remember reading that it was her editors who really controlled that story (and the title/cover). In any case, I've been pleased to see her appear to grow tremendously as a journalist over the past few years.
Why 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.
I 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.
Your 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?
It'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.
I'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.
Just 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
Personally 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.
Kevin 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
There'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.
Startups 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.
I 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.
Maybe. 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.
muchos 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
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.