$3.6 million in VC funding for a news site about wrist-watches? I wonder what that pitch was, it must have been good.
Should be sufficient.
A bunch of people, including me, just kept commenting "Roll back!!!" But for some reason that's beyond my understanding, they said they could not rollback the upgrade. And that was the end.
That said, I actually still use Digg in its current form today because I find it very useful. I just wish it had the on-site comments, but I understand the moderation nightmare task they'd be taking on if they enabled comments like the old Digg.
Anything that's driven by users rather than vetted and sanitised by trusted writers/editors, will scare lucrative brand based advertisers. Just look at Google Adsense's content rules to see how much advertising shapes the web's content.
I think that's what happened with Digg. I speculate that something similar is happening with Reddit but at a much slower rate - like closing undesirable sub-reddits etc.
http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/12/digg-sold-to-linkedin-and-t...
He moved to Google after his startup Oink/Milk crashed and burned, of course.
In the show "Silicon Valley" they even made a joke about how Rose had to fail at a bunch of stuff before he could "succeed" with Digg, and then subsequently failed at a bunch of other stuff afterward as well.
It perfectly personifies the idiocy of SV VCs. The kid comes out in a hoodie with the typical college startup story: "changing the world from our dorm room". He has an app called Scan, a barcode scanner, that makes virtually no money and has already garnered almost $10 million in funding. When the Sharks are skeptical, he lays down the most stereotypical tech kid answer ever: "I have some interviews with investors that look at numbers to make a decision and they miss the boat, and then I have investors who look at me to make the decision." This is supposed to sound noble but it just reveals that SV is so full of idiots afraid that they're going to miss the next Facebook that anyone who comes to them and looks like an apathetic college kid and talks about dorm rooms can get $10 million on completely silly business concepts.
The same applies to Rose. The numbers don't matter, it's about having the visage of a trendy tech whiz. This is apparently enough to convince SV investors to part with tens of millions of dollars. I don't know why I'm not out there trying to cash in on that.
In a serious tone, thanks for letting me know. I didn't know what had happened to them.
They reminded me a lot of people I know who are really passionate about computer hardware. They knew everything about certain brands and their lines, their inner workings, how to fix them, how to get really obscure parts for the them, everything. And they wanted to share their information and talk to other knowledgeable people as well.
It's a pretty vibrant and interesting community. I'm not surprised he chose to get involved in the industry.
You're right about the passion relating to that of computer hardware. The first thing that really intrigued me about watches is the amount of craftsman ship and engineering that goes into making a complicated mechanical watch. As a software engineer, I find similarities in the watch engineering world - so I believe thats why it pulled me in so easily. It truly is an amazing example of human engineering at its best.