Things haven"t been well at Digg for a while now. They"ve gone through a couple new CEOs and one disastrous site re-design over the last 12 months and now, according to Mike Arrington, at least, the social bookmarking site has lost its talisman.
In a post on TechCrunch, Arrington informed the world that his sources claim Kevin Rose has already left the company and is currently working on a new startup.
The current issues at Digg are a far cry from the exciting days of 2004 when Rose first launched the site. At the time people hadn"t seen anything like it and user numbers skyrocketed. The huge success of Digg meant Google came knocking, with a proposed takeover deal almost complete before the plug was pulled. The deal would have valued the fledgling site at around $200,000,000.
Recent times have brought trouble to the offices of Digg. Matt Williams has taken over but Digg"s fortunes haven"t improved. With Twitter, Facebook, and just about everyone else now eating Digg"s lunch, it"s debatable whether the once world-conquering social bookmarking site has a role to play in the future of the web.
Speaking of the future; what next for Rose?
Mike Arrington believes the entrepreneur is close to closing $1m worth of financing for a new startup, though little is known of the new company at this time. Could the new company be another crack at Digg or has the success of another Rose company, Revision 3, left the internet"s darling keen on a more multimedia approach to making money?
Whatever Kevin Rose is working on, we can"t wait to see it.