First Digg, then the online video network, Revision 3 and now another start-up!
Business Week poster boy Kevin Rose is rumored to have teamed up with Daniel Burka also of Digg, and first time entrepreneur Leah Culver and has started a new company. Rose and Burka have worked closely on tools like Digg Spy. Burka is one of the main designers of Digg.com. Rose and Burka have worked closely for nearly two years.
We have learned from sources familiar with the company, that the trio are currently working on a new kind of a communications tool, that can be dubbed as an IM competitor. 
The company which is currently operating in stealth mode is going launch sometime later this month. When we contacted Rose, he declined to comment. Seems like he is going to work on this in parallel with the other two start-ups.
His previous two start-ups, Digg and Revision3, have been funded by Greylock Partners’ David Sze.
Photos courtesy of “Scott Beale/Laughing Squid” hosted on Flickr.
Errata: Daniel Burka works for Digg, not Stamen Labs, as I wrote earlier. My bad!
29 comments so far
11:52 PM PT
Om: How would David & other investors allow Kevin Rose to work on other startups? How does Kevin pull this off?
(In addition to the fact that the new doesn’t seem to be related to Digg)
11:53 PM PT
p.s. Leah Culver is also the girl who successfully pulled this off:
http://leahculver.com/laser-etched-laptop/
1:44 AM PT
Rather than hero I get the feeling that Kevin Rose is going to be the poster boy for the Web 2.0 bubble. His work gets a lot of attention and Digg used to be great, but I wonder how much value has really been created or more importantly what is the future earnings outlook of his ventures. I’m not sure it is as good as the hype would suggest.
http://www.ebizmba.com
2:15 AM PT
Not much info there. They could have given us some screenshots or a short list of features.
4:33 AM PT
Well, I think Kevin is looking for more income streams since he’s got his fingers crossed after the HD-DVD stuff.
Who knows maybe Digg would go down ?
5:47 AM PT
Didn’t Rose mention an IM idea he had on one of the past Diggnations? Something along the lines of allowing friends to befriend your friends’ friends. This could also have some type of friend ‘pool’ of similar friends. Any other ideas?
6:21 AM PT
Sounds like a Twitter competitor. Though the genius of Twitter is that it doesn’t so much replace IM as embrace and extend it.
7:49 AM PT
Om, Why would you publish this? Your friendship/ business relationship with Kevin should have been more important than getting eyeballs to your site by breaking confidential information.
Mike
8:36 AM PT
hooray! more choices.
9:04 AM PT
@ ebusiness, I hate to say it but I kind of think so too.
9:12 AM PT
@political grind
Ya I remember hearing Kevin mentioned something about a new project on diggnation recently. I thought I was mistaken but I’m glad you brought it up as well.
9:35 AM PT
Forget Kevin, focus more on Leah since she’s better looking than Kevin.
9:40 AM PT
Kevin Rose is like the 1 person boy band for web 2.0. He came in at the right time, he’s going to saturate himself, and then he’ll join the ranks of the Back Street Boys.
10:07 AM PT
Kevin Rose is arrogant and IS the poster boy for Bubble 2.0. Seriously now, how can an investor like Greylock allow this?
Kevin Rose and Digg are going down. The community sucks, the user numbers are vastly ofer-inflated. Welcome to “This Kid Lost $60 MM he never had in 18 months!”
10:22 AM PT
Leah I believe is Daniel’s “lady friend” as Kevin put it once on Diggnation when he was using her laptop.
10:44 AM PT
Last I checked, Digg has yet to turn a profit.
I doubt Revision 3 is any different.
I can’t help but scratch my head and wonder how Rose’s investors keep pouring millions into his projects when to date, he has shown ZERO ability to turn a profit.
10:45 AM PT
This venture will be successful, no doubt about it. There are thousands of users on digg who worship Rose plus he already has a platform for instantly promoting his future ventures. Digg/Rose won’t go down no matter how much anyone might want to see it happen.
Nick
http://www.adgridwork.com | free advertising for blogs
11:16 AM PT
Would be cool if he’d combine twitteresque features with rss Options and some digg News etc. Oh and put some geodata into it, so that I can
trace people on my list.. Skip annoying ads and make it a universal bin with a decent transparent UI please. Thanks, Santa!
12:00 PM PT
The falsified posts from Kevin are funny to read. If you want to read a little more background on Leah and what she is up to, I wrote an informal interview with her a few months back.
12:45 PM PT
So wait - how well is Digg doing from an income/expenses standpoint? I don’t care what people are saying the site is worth because that doesn’t seem to be a good measure to me about the health of Digg.
12:48 PM PT
woooo I’m happy for him
12:57 PM PT
Digg is not profitable. How can you call it a “success”. By measures used by some of the above comments, eToys would be considered a big success. Users don’t mean success. Digg can’t monetize it’s 22-35 year-old, tech savvy crowd beyond a certain point. These people (including myself) rarely pay attention to ads.
1:02 PM PT
The only revenue source on DIGG that I can see is the adsense bar at the top and bottom right and a box on the story details page. I can’t imagine they get that many clicks on it but who knows?
They also sell direct advertising via Federated Media. The links is at the bottom. The minimum buy available there is $46,000 but I have never seen anything other than google ads in any of the spaces.
1:30 PM PT
Funding is always a situation for startups. Hope you Keep it going…
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Taylore Vance
1:42 PM PT
Hi all,
I just deleted comments that were left by various people claiming to be Kevin Rose. We have confirmed with Kevin that he did not leave the comments.
Thanks,
Liz
8:09 PM PT
Liz, tell the truth, when you saw those posts from “Kevin” was your first reaction “oh sh**?”
8:41 PM PT
Wait, Digg has ads? Never knew that. Oh wait, most of the tech crowd does tend to run annoying ad-blocking software. Ooops.
While it used to be an interesting site, I rarely visit it for anything else that a site finder… RSS solves that as do other aggregators.
So how is Digg and Revision3 profitable again?
Opps, meant ‘whatever K Rose tells us to do we must…must follow’ to the investors
8:32 PM PT
They don’t need to be profitable for him to make a profit. He is in the business of selling himself.
5:43 AM PT
boludeces. en internet http://boludo.tv
http://www.boludo.tv voten por lo que les gustaria ver, videos, juegos, fotos, etc.
Digg is alright, but this wont be any google’s serg&bin this is just a transitory process there are still billions to be made online and is just a matter of playing along. it doesnt matter if he fails or not, he probably wont ever have to worry about finances ever again if he’s forehead is two finger’s thik and still he managed to play the big boys game, thats in my opinion prety dope my man, specialy for a wanna be rebel slash geek dot digg
cheeerssss!
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