Report: Digg co-founder Kevin Rose leaving Digg

Digg co-founder Kevin Rose.

(Credit:James Martin/CNET)

Diggmay have just lost one of its biggest supporters--and the guy who is credited with starting it all.

TechCrunchreportsthat Kevin Rose, who co-founded the social news site back in 2004 along with Ron Gorodetzky and Owen Byrne, has resigned from the company and is putting his energy into a yet unnamed start-up.

Rose relinquished his post as Digg's interim CEO in August of last year after filling in for four months following thedeparture of Jay Adelson, the company's CEO for five years. Rosewas replacedby former Amazon executive Matt Williams, who continues to run the day-to-day operations at the start-up.

Digg spokesperson Erin Walsh effectively denied TechCrunch's claims in an e-mail to CNET, saying Rose's role is the same as it has been since Williams came on as CEO."Matt Williams joined Digg as CEO more than 6 months ago and Kevin stayed on as founder and board member, nothing of which has changed."

Digg staffers also offered their 2 cents on a thread about the story on Digg.com, saying"don't worry, we're not slowing down any time soon,"and"Not to sound dramatic butthis news means pretty much nothingto people working on the site. Nothing is changing, we are working on bringing you guys more cool stuff."

During an on-stageinterviewwith Rose by TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington at the blog's Disrupt conference in September, Rose dodged a question about whether he planned to remain at Digg for the next six months, saying only that"you get a little burnt out over time."

Along with Digg, Rose was also co-founder of Pownce, which closed down shortly after being acquired by Six Apart. Rose also holds investments in a number of companies, including Twitter, Gowalla, Foursquare, Ngmoco, Square, Zynga, and Facebook. One of Rose's most recent ventures has beenFoundation, a private newsletter and video service that subscribers can pay $3.99 a month to receive.

Digg, which lets users vote user-submitted news stories up or down, had originally been on the trajectory for a number of buyout deals. One$100 million offerfrom former Vice President Al Gore would have made Digg part of Gore's Current Media, and another from Google in 2008 would have put the company somewhere in the ballpark of $200 million. Google reportedlywalked away from that onein its final stages.Other suitersat the time were said to be Microsoft and two unidentified media companies.

Source