Digg’s Kevin Rose can’t afford a couch

August 10, 2006 | Matt Marshall | Comments | |
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The founder of the news Web site Digg reveals more details about the BusinessWeek article, on This Week in Tech (click on the player). The BW piece claimed Rose had made $60M in 18 months, but Rose said BW got it all wrong. He is not a multi-millionaire, nor a millionaire, not even a “thousand-aire,” he said, adding that he can’t even afford a couch. He said BW worked up estimates of his worth, but that “it’s just paper fake money.” The BW article also said his company was breaking even. “Digg isn’t even breaking even, they got that wrong too.” BW photographers had him drinking a beer, among other things, for a shot they told him would be inside the magazine. He had no idea he’d be on the cover.

Working for a big media outfit, we can understand how the different parts of the big machine can get out of whack sometimes; it has happened to us, where deadlines, misunderstandings, and cover design needs really butcher a story at the last minute. This Digg story is a particularly bad example. It is really too bad, because we know the reporting team over there, and we’d been thinking this year what a great job they’ve been doing, and how they really get it.

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Matt Marshall is editor and CEO of VentureBeat. Follow him on Twitter at @mmarshall, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.

  • "Working for a big media outfit, we can understand how the different parts of the big machine can get out of whack sometimes;" - Matt, that is reaching a bit isn't it? There is no doubt they ran the article and cover to sell more magazines, not because of any misunderstandings. Lots of other media outlets do this and BW is just joining in. They shouldn't now claim that they misunderstood some issues and that caused the cover and article to appear the way it did. I mean look at the headline, "How this kid made $60 million in 15 months". That's not a misunderstanding driven by deadlines or cover design - thats a sales pitch...
  • Steven,

    You're correct. It was a monster of a story, and I didn't mean to excuse it. What I meant is that each person in the system has their job, and pressures, and things can get out of line if each person along the way isn't intensily vigilant. The reporter needs to be able to assert the right to veto an edit, or if the editor insists on it, then the reporter should be able to pull their name from the story. But from personal experience I've seen how last minute changes are made, and I'm out to dinner or something, and an editor, photographer, designer or page layout person, someone two or three steps removed from me, makes a call on something that just isn't right -- and I'm not around to set them straight. And they are doing it, yes, to get maximum play, but they are also really misreading something -- such as an estimate of someone's worth, and incorrectly turning it into a fact, etc. (The headline writer wants to write the juciest headline, because that is their job, but they do generally want to be honest; and yes, the designer wants to have a jazzy picture, because is their job, and the editor wants to have a snappy summary of how much someone is worth, because that is their job.)

    I don't think we disagree on this. I'm just saying I understand how it happens. I'm also saying it there were some really bad decisions made.
  • What a fascinating article and the truth behind it. I myself haven't read the article yet but I was pretty amazed to read about the Digg guy. So it turns out to be just another FUD. Too bad.

    Actually I don't know how much money Digg can make by selling Adsense or TShirts on the site. And most of the revenue will go into servers cost -- that's for sure. I don't know if Digg have raised any money or not but a google search for "Digg raise money" didn't return any good answer. So I guess Digg are pretty self-support financially. So I would say that the $60 mil is paper-money calculated by the BW writers to show how much the potentials of a popular web2.0 service worths.

    Anyway, it's really fascinating. My dad sometimes said that don't be lieve in the books you read. That's so true. I love the old man's wisdom.
  • Thanks for the reply to my comment Matt. I can see what you mean a little clearer now. Definitely looks like a lot of mistakes were made but also very hard in a situation like you describe.