Digg, the social news site that skyrocketed to notoriety in the mid-2000s and then subsequently saw its star fade with the rise of Twitter and Facebook, said it will lay off 10 percent of its staff today.
The company’s founder Kevin Rose (pictured), who famously graced a BusinessWeek cover in 2006 as part of a story that chronicled the rebirth of the Silicon Valley tech scene, wrote an e-mail announcing the decision to his staff today.
He recently stepped in as interim CEO after his longtime chief executive Jay Adelson stepped down.
Hey everyone,
This morning we faced the difficult task of reducing our team by about 10%. This was an emotional and rough morning for everyone involved. Laying off dedicated and hard working individuals is extremely difficult, but we tried our best to treat everyone with the utmost respect and support. I hope all of you will join me in the effort to assist all of those affected, be it as a reference or a referring source and most importantly, as a friend.
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. 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.
I’m sure there will be many follow- up questions to this email. So, we’ll be holding an all hands today at 3pm where you can ask questions and share your comments.
Thanks,
Kevin
