Digg lays off 10 percent of staff
A month after the company's CEO left and was replaced by founder Kevin Rose, Digg cuts 10 percent of staff in an effort to focus more on engineering and development.
One month after an executive shakeup that saw the departure of CEO Jay Adelson, social-news site Digg announced that it is laying off around 10 percent of its employees. That amounts, most likely, to fewer than a dozen people.
"This is one of the hardest decisions we've had to make recently but we strongly believe that it is the right decision for the long-term health of the company," founder Kevin Rose, who took over for Adelson, said in an e-mail to employees that was subsequently posted to the company blog. "In order to achieve our goals, we are putting more emphasis on the engineering and development efforts. In fact, we are still hiring for these teams as they are critical in getting us to where we need to be for the future, for our impending upcoming redesign, and much beyond. The only way for us to truly succeed is to adapt and adjust as necessary."
With Facebook's "like" button now unleashed on the Web, capitalizing on the social-news trend that Digg once owned, those hundred-million-dollar Digg buyout rumors have come to a halt. The company has been working to push a revamped version out the door, but it clearly is struggling internally: Adelson's departure came shortly after the resignation of Chief Strategy Officer Mike Maser, who jumped to AOL and took a handful of other Digg employees with him.
UPDATE (12:51 p.m. PT): A Digg representative says that Maser did not recruit any Digg employees after departing for AOL and that a coincidental hire of a former Digg employee at AOL was unrelated.