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Digg founder announces departure amid user revolt

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By The Drum Team, Editorial

September 1, 2010 | 2 min read

In a widely trailed move Digg founder and interim chief executive, Kevin Rose, has announced he is to step down from managing day to day operations at the firm with Amazon’s Matt Williams will assume Rose’s duties.

It culminates a tumultuous week for the content sharing service, which has recently completed a significant reworking of its website to improve speed and personalisation.

Avid users do not dig the changes however with many aghast at the loss of such cherished features as “upcoming news” and the “bury” button for registering displeasure at dull stories.

Particular concern has been levelled at the domination of the sites front page by a handful of publishers with seven controlling over 50% of the sites front page stories.

At the heart of the issue for former fans is a sense that Digg has broken its “covenant” by taking power from Digg’s hordes of fans and handing it to “corporate level blogs.”

In protest users have been bombarding the service with links to reddit.com, a similar site and Digg’s nemesis, whilst also penning satirical cartoons.

The site looks set to be the main beneficiary of Digg;s travails, desoite an antiquated interface. One user on Digg’s forums said: “Design is an important part of any website.

With that being said; content is king, and therefore Reddit wins, even though it looks like something out of the 90'ies.”

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