Digg Founder Kevin Rose Resigns from the Company He Created

Ocimnet - While Reddit's fortunes grow, with the occasional hiccup, Digg is not doing very well. The much hyped redesign failed and it's been loosing users ever since it was introduced. Now its losing one of its cofounders as well as Kevin Rose announced that he will be quitting Digg and is already working on a new startup. The news of his departure was reported by TechCrunch and he later confirmed it. "Wow, tons of questions - I'll continue advising Digg / on the board of directors, & taping Diggnation (as i have been since @mwdigg joined)," he tweeted.

Rose's departure is not exactly surprising. He's hasn't been around much for months and doesn't even really use Digg anymore. While he's technically been an executive at Digg ever since the new CEO was brought in, it unlikely he played a very active role at the company.

So the company probably won't suffer much now that he's officially gone. But it doesn't paint a pretty picture when the cofounder and the main public face of the company for years leaves.

Not that there were that many people that still believed in Digg at this point. Once one of the rising stars of Silicon Valley, Digg hasn't had a very rough time lately, much of its own doing.

The company sought to reinvent itself with a major redesign last summer. It aimed to make publishers feel more welcomed and maybe boost up revenues.

But the redesign ended up alienating even its most loyal audience and caused it a big slump in traffic. Digg lost 6 million visitors since August, going from 18 million a month to 12 million at the beginning of the year.

Rose is already working on a new company and has already started raising money, over $1 million from venture capital firms. There's no word yet on what exactly he's building now.

[via - softpedia]