Digg founder Kevin Rose embraces email

Digg founder Kevin Rose is joining the ranks of entrepreneurs who are jumping on to the old-school newsletter format. He just announced his latest project, a newsletter called Foundation that will feature “video interviews, product reviews, rants, and early access to pre-launched websites.”

Over the past few years, Rose’s involvement in Digg has varied. He seemed to step back from Digg while focusing on his Diggnation show on Web TV channel Revision 3, then he took over as interim CEO earlier this year, then he stepped down again and has been vague about his future involvement. Meanwhile, the social news aggregation site remains very popular, but it has also seen a big backlash from fans over the recent launch of Digg version 4.

The Foundation newsletter is apparently a mutated version of Rose’s previously announced project Fforward. Subscribers will need to pay $3.99 per month — Rose said the money will go toward “equipment, travel, and editing.” The videos will eventually be posted publicly (generating more attention for the show), but subscribers will get access a week before everyone else.

It seems like there’s been a bit of a renaissance in the startup world’s use of email recently. Weblogs and Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis has been sending out most of his thoughts via email, rather than on a blog, as has Path founder Dave Morin.

I’ve embedded the first video below, which features Rose’s interview with Jack Dorsey, the creator of Twitter and CEO of mobile payments startup Square.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQy_HFHOZug&w=640&h=390]