It really surprises me that nobody in the boardroom thought to say: "This might look bad. Let's hold off for a couple weeks until the buzz dies off."
They aren't going to do that by sitting around, so decisive action was taken. As another poster in this thread noted, the search was already on for potential CEO candidates to replace Rose - that process probably got expedited to avoid a further downward spiral.
The problems with V4 are nothing to do with technology or audience fit etc etc, it's bigger than that - it's a management issue. Management launched a buggy product that nobody wanted. And management just got replaced.
So Digg might in fact be doing right by their customers in this case. They're certainly bringing in more money than Reddit.
I would count them as a group who is not prepared to sit around to wait and see what happens - they want things fixed yesterday. Giving Rose a 2nd, 3rd chance etc doesn't build trust with this group IMO.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-20/digg-s-founder-kevi...