
Kevin Rose steps down as CEO of Digg - zain
http://about.digg.com/blog/company-update
======
whalesalad
I think if digg changed their entire concept around into one that takes all of
the news and combines stories into threads, ala techmeme, they'd be a king
again. I'd love to have the stories from TC, read write web, and all the other
blogs on a particular topic consolidated into one story with links to the
externals, an intelligent description created from all the posts combined, and
maybe even a little meter to weigh the particular blogs/sites involved.

Right now Digg is just adding to the information overload. I think we're all
pretty exhausted with information. I'll see something pop up on twitter, I'll
see it here as well, or on my RSS reader from another site. We're all talking
about similar things. We need a global sort of decentralized "permalink"
concept. Digg has the resources to do this. They can "digg" the web, instead
of me digging stories. They'll find out what's hot via continuing user
submissions, observing the twittersphere, popular blogs, etc... and then
report to me a summary of everything regarding, for example, OpenSolaris being
canned.

Yet another chaotic "stream of conciousness" comment from me... but I'm just
getting the discussion going.

EDIT: this could work for everything... I obviously care mostly about tech and
shy away from politics, but it would be cool to have all topics of a
particular issue, with their weight on the political spectrum. Just another
example.

~~~
naner
We need Google's "Priority Inbox" for RSS feeds. The signal to noise ratio in
my newsfeed "inbox" is way out of whack.

~~~
whalesalad
I'm so sad that Google lags on deploying these features to the apps accounts.
I'd love a "Give me all Gmail features, when they happen" option for my Google
apps account. But, don't even get me started on how effed up the integration
with all of that is. I want michael@whalesalad.com to be my google ID, not
some random gmail address I had to create. UGH.

~~~
CrazedGeek
For what it's worth, the Priority Inbox is supposed to be rolled out to Apps
users at the same time as the general rollout in the next week.

~~~
gphil
I have the priority inbox in my Gmail and in my Apps right now. As far as my
accounts go, they were rolled out simultaneously today.

------
bprater
I'd say this is extremely poor timing considering the backlash that version
4.0 of digg.com has been getting. It reeks of knee-jerk-ism.

It really surprises me that nobody in the boardroom thought to say: "This
might look bad. Let's hold off for a couple weeks until the buzz dies off."

~~~
fookyong
I'm sure the option was on the table to "hold off" but in disaster-mode (which
is what this is) one of the board's functions is to restore shareholder faith.

They aren't going to do that by sitting around, so decisive action was taken.
As another poster in this thread noted, the search was already on for
potential CEO candidates to replace Rose - that process probably got expedited
to avoid a further downward spiral.

The problems with V4 are nothing to do with technology or audience fit etc
etc, it's bigger than that - it's a management issue. Management launched a
buggy product that nobody wanted. And management just got replaced.

~~~
dshah
I disagree. When in disaster-mode for a privately held company, the board
should not be focused on restoring shareholder faith -- but in restoring
user/customer faith.

~~~
brandnewlow
Digg's customers are its advertisers, not its users. The users are the product
they sell to their customers.

So Digg might in fact be doing right by their customers in this case. They're
certainly bringing in more money than Reddit.

~~~
jaybol
Good point that the users are the product...and no one would assume that you
could keep customers happy without paying attention to your product, although
I must say that Digg is doing a pretty decent job of responding to user
concerns and clearly communicating the order that they will be implementing
changes. I have noticed far fewer 'broken axles' and now everyone will be
watching to see how quickly they implement features from v3 that everyone is
clamoring for.

------
InclinedPlane
Seems to me that digg is having a myspace moment. It's failed to keep up with
innovation as the world has changed around it. Digg's value-add has been left
in the dust by more targeted sites (reddit, HN, even twitter, facebook,
failblog, 4chan, etc.), and they can't fix that problem without fundamentally
reinventing digg.

~~~
runjake
4chan and innovation? Wha?

~~~
_delirium
At least when it comes to internet culture, it's where a lot of stuff
originates these days--- the same jokes and memes will eventually filter down
to digg/reddit/elsewhere a bit later. Sort of the role that SomethingAwful,
Fark, and digg have played at various times, to various extents.

~~~
nailer
That's community, not tech innovation.

~~~
_delirium
Sure, but digg (like most social media companies) has always been more about
innovation on the social side than on the technical side. The actual technical
meat behind digg or twitter isn't what made them successful; finding a way to
make themselves the center of certain kinds of culture is.

------
hop
Its not as bad as taking the MySpace CEO position, but what would Digg's CEO
do to really grow a business like that? Could it ever be a $100M+ revenue,
profitable company for the long term?

They have taken $40M in funding, have 50+ employees and I have no idea what
their revenue is, but I bet its under $15M for for selling ads.

Good luck to them, hope he has the courage/support to do something radical.

------
lazyjeff
Digg never seemed like the kind of company that was run by an engineering
culture. It feels like a MySpace type of company, where they have good
marketing / media people but not about the technology and platform. One thing
that suggests this is that most of the early engineering talent has left
[<http://atomized.org/2010/08/they-can%E2%80%99t-go-back/>] , which is not
something you see at Google, Facebook, or even Reddit. The new CEO might
benefit from turning this around to avoid disasters like v4.

~~~
jonknee
Google was founded to solve an engineering problem. Digg was founded to solve
a social problem. Their respective cultures aren't surprising.

~~~
jwecker
I doubt there's a correlation. Facebook is engineer-driven and was founded to
solve a social problem. And the problem google solved was borderline social.
Don't mean to be argumentative- I just think that it's a choice that
leadership tends to make early on that's unrelated to the problem being
solved, and that one of the two choices/cultures seems to do far better than
the other. (could be confirmation bias, but I kind of doubt it).

------
Julie188
Poor Williams! So Rose says to the guy, "Here you go ... I broke everything
and chased away our most loyal users and now I’m leaving you to stand behind
it and defend it. Have fun!"

------
rolux
This comic strip might be one of the most insightful contributions to the
topic: <http://ncomment.com/blog/>

~~~
shaunxcode
That is seriously incredible and brought me up to speed. Do you know if that
was illustrated over the weekend or is a lot of it mash-up/collage? Either way
- awesome.

~~~
whatusername
it's old. pre Digg 4.

------
Osiris
They seriously didn't have v4 in beta long enough. I got accepted to the beta
a little while back and it had lots of issues even then with the broken axle
and other errors. For a change that substantial, they really should have had a
very long beta period where they slowly brought people in.

I was shocked when I heard it was going live because I knew from the beta that
it wasn't even close to ready.

~~~
thisorthat
They have been working v4 for a long time and yet the site is unusable. I
guess the rush came from investors to push it out which was not a smart idea.

------
mcgraw
This shouldn't be of any shock to anyone. Rose is not a CEO type and has
admitted so in the past. When he launched Digg he promptly went to his known
acquaintance, Jay Adelson, to lead the company while he remained as the chief
architect. It was only time until he found somebody else to take control of
Digg while he led the charge in his prior role.

Is it a coincidence that the replacement came in right after a poor launch? We
could speculate that all day but this CEO was likely already inbound before
the launch. Today just marked it official.

------
marknutter
What a nightmare. I think Digg v4 should have been launched as a separate
startup, helmed by Kevin ala Pownce. It's just too different, and it looks
like they may have killed the goose that laid the golden egg. What a
disaster..

~~~
dotcoma
I'm not really sure how golden those eggs were, truth be told. Was digg
profitable? How profitable? Not enough for a company that has taken in $40
million in VC money, for sure...

~~~
marknutter
It could have been profitable if it wasn't. Up until recently Reddit was being
run by only two or three engineers on a shoe-string budget. Digg had way too
many employees, way too much ambition.

~~~
Devilboy
At one point they have SEVENTY people! That's pretty insane for what Digg is
if you ask me.

~~~
marknutter
Seventy _paid (salaried)_ employees?

------
davidcann
Can someone please un-editorialize the title?

The CEO transition has been planned for months. It may be poorly timed, but
the title of this link makes it sound like he's resigning due to the v4 launch
issues.

------
ojbyrne
It's kind of telling that the digg blog now has the same blue that twitter's
blog has. Hopefully the CEO can do something about the complete absence of
original thought.

~~~
delano
That's an interesting take coming from you.

------
levesque
If I go to digg.com, I get a message about digg having a broken axle (i.e. it
does not work). Is that just me?

~~~
jamesseda
I guess he pulled the plug on the way out

------
zackham
Anyone have insight into the timing of this? I understand they have been
looking for someone for a while and this timing may simply be a result of an
ongoing process coming to a close... but at the same time I'm sure there has
been a lot going on internally at Digg since the launch of v4. Either way, the
recent Digg events have been very public and very interesting. I think there
is a decent amount to be learned from all this, or at least that is how I am
rationalizing closely watching this all unfold.

~~~
staunch
Pure speculation: they'd been looking semi-casually for a while, interviewing
prospects, etc. The VCs were probably hoping Kevin would pull a Steve Jobs
comeback. Then the Digg v4 fiasco happened. The VCs pulled the trigger and
fast tracked their most promising candidate.

~~~
ojbyrne
They said before the launch that they were going to announce the new CEO this
week.

~~~
pavs
But, that doesn't sound dramatic enough!

------
davcro
What a cop out. Kevin Rose has been hyping Digg v4 for months. He should stand
behind his product, his vision, his creation. He should go down with a fight.

~~~
elxrr
To be fair, he'd always planned this to be temporary. In his podcast with Tim
Ferris just a couple of weeks ago, he said he'd be stepping down pretty soon.

~~~
davcro
But he is leaving at the worst possible time. A big upgrade requires months of
follow up work and he should know that.

I'm not usually an internet tough guy, but this is outrageous. If I was a digg
engineer I would be livid. The captain sailed into uncharted waters and then
abandoned ship. He should protect his crew. He should do everything in his
power to save the ship.

~~~
ojbyrne
There's been a steady stream of digg engineers (and product managers, dbas,
sysadmins, VPs) heading out the door for at least 2 years. So the ship is long
since abandoned, the "captain" stayed on.

------
AmericanOP
One of these sites just needs to install a sliding bar at the top. All the way
to the left is Failblog pictures. All the way to the right is academic
articles. Build this.

~~~
blhack
This is an incredibly difficult thing to do. You're essentially going to have
to rely on your users to categorize things, which they probably won't do.

One person's academic article is another person's lolcat picture.

This was exemplified to me recently on <http://newslily.com/>; We had a new
user who was constantly submitting things that he thought were appropriate for
"science" or "medicine", but they weren't (at least not in the opinion of most
of the users). To him, this was hard science; good stuff, but it was mostly
things that we weren't interested in. How would the slider work for him?

The solution (one that is similar to what digg did [although we've had this
for about a year, humph]) was effectively user-whitelisting. Now, what you see
on the front page of the site is things that our moderators have approved, and
what you see in the various categories (or "upcoming" section) is things from
users that you have whitelisted.

A major misunderstanding (and why I think that user-whitelisting is better
than what reddit or HN do [and is also why I think a control like what you're
talking about wouldn't workd]) is that people are _not_ all the same; this is
why I like the idea behind what digg did (hey, it's worked for facebook and
twitter, right?)

------
phatbyte
I feel bad for Kevin, to be stepped down from his own startup, it was his
idea, it was his money, and now some VC guys just throw him out of the window.
I don't believe Kevin just stepped down because of the V4 fail. Specially when
he just became CEO again a couple of months ago.

Digg just became a zombie site, as a user, everytime I visit I feel like i'm
visiting my RSS reader, it just doesn't feel to have any human interaction
except for the comments.

Would it be pretty bad if they rolled back to V3 ? I mean...this version 4 is
really not working out for anyone.

~~~
rpledge
Kevin said right after Jay left that he was only a temp CEO. Did you even read
the other comments on this story?

~~~
phatbyte
you mean read > 50 comments ? Sorry but no. But thanks for the update tho ;)

~~~
rpledge
Yes, I can see how taking the time to educate yourself would slow down your
hobby of spewing out libellous crap on the Internet

------
damncabbage
Geez, I didn't know that linking to Reddit from the Digg front page was that
big of a deal.

------
michaelhalligan
Just like Technorati, Digg's failure at coming up with a business model that
doesn't annoy it's entire userbase has rapidly faded it into irrelevancy. Does
Digg have a lot of hardware? I hope they use dovebid, so I won't have to
register with a new auction site for the bankruptcy specials.

------
ultrasaurus
This is old news, he submitted his resignation to Reddit a few days ago. (/I
know I know, old joke, mod me down.)

