Successful Internet Entrepreneur – Kevin Rose – Digg Founder

Digg, the social-bookmarking website had been the harbinger of countless social networking sites that work in the domain of story submission as well as voting systems. No one realised that something that started out as more of an experiment in November 2004 would in no time revolutionise the way people discover and share content over the net.

Beginning

The idea had started taking root sometime in the middle of the 2004 but the actual work on the site started only in October. And in no time i.e. on 5th December, 2004 the unique site Digg was launched to the whole world.

Born on 21 February 1977 in the state of California, US, Kevin Rose is recognised as the founder of and chief architect at Digg. He was also the one who had insisted on naming the site Digg instead of originally decided name of “Diggnation.” The name though was eventually adopted by Rose for his co-hosted weekly podcast. Diggnation, the podcast, focuses on different stories which have been popular on Digg.

Growth

Over the years many changes were made to the site to make it more advanced and refined. The year 2006 was very significant as version 3 of Digg was released around the midyear, in the month of June. It was this version that came out with specific categories for World & Business, Entertainment, Technology, Gaming, etc. Digg has inspired many a site as far as concept is considered but none has been able to match its service quality and popularity. Digg in fact attracts around 250 million visitors every year.

Diversification

Kevin Rose also had stints with other professions including television. He worked for The Screen Savers as a technical production assistant. He had become a well recognised face as a co-host on the same show. Interestingly it was only during this show that he developed the urge to do something new and big, which eventually came out as Digg.

With time Kevin Rose went on to launch various internet start-ups. He founded WeFollow and co-founded Pownce and Revision3. It was in the year 2007 that Rose along with Culver, Burk and Allen launched Pownce, a social networking and micro-blogging site, another feather in his cap. Pownce was initially a by invite only site but in January 2008 it was opened to public. By that time the site had become so popular that the invites were rumoured to being sold over the net. In the month of December the same year it was sold to Six Apart.

Recognition

The year that followed 2008, was quite significant for Rose as he was included in the top 25 most influential people on the web, the list brought out by Time Magazine. For someone who dropped out of computer-science from the University of Nevada (Las Vegas) it was a great honour. As a matter of fact ever since he had formed Digg, Rose has featured on the covers of various magazines including Business Week and Inc.

Rose has been an outstanding and a very successful internet entrepreneur. He may be young but he is already an inspiration for many across the world.