Kevin Rose

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For other persons named Kevin Rose, see Kevin Rose (disambiguation).
Kevin Rose

Born February 21, 1977 (1977-02-21) (age 32)
Nevada, United States[1]
Website
kevinrose.com
digg.com
revision3.com
wefollow.com

Robert Kevin Rose (born February 21, 1977 in California[1]) is an entrepreneur who first became well known as an on-air talent and later as a co-host working on TechTV's popular show The Screen Savers (which later became Attack of the Show! on G4) until his departure from the network on May 22, 2005. Rose is also well known for his Internet start-ups that he has co-founded: Revision3, Pownce, WeFollow and most notably the social-bookmarking website Digg. He is also co-host with Alex Albrecht on Diggnation, a weekly podcast discussing the most popular content submitted to Digg.

Contents

[edit] Early life

Rose was born in Redding, California and lived in Oregon for a brief period before his family moved to Las Vegas, Nevada. Most of his childhood was spent in Las Vegas. As a child, he was a member of the Boy Scouts of America and became an Eagle Scout[2]. His first experience with computers began at the age of 8 when his father purchased a Gateway 80386 SX 16. Rose soon got in to the world of BBS in the late 1980s. Eventually he was running a two-node Wildcat! BBS (and PCBoard) with a CD-ROM full of shareware for people to access.[1]

Rose transferred to Vo-Tech High School in Las Vegas in 1992 to study computers and animation. Upon graduation from high school, he attended the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, specializing in computer science, but dropped out in 1998 to pursue the '90s tech boom.[3] After dropping out, he worked for the Department of Energy, at the Nevada Test Site, as a technology advisor. He later worked for several dot-com startups through CMGI.[1]

[edit] Personal life

When Rose was starting Digg, he invested $6000 into the site, which was supposed to be for a deposit on a house for him and his girlfriend at the time. As a result of this, their relationship broke down. Since this, Rose has been quoted to say that "no matter what happens with Digg, I won't put business first again."[4]

Rose has had a string of public relationships, including a long-term relationship with his former co-host Sarah Lane. People close to Rose and Lane say she was "the love of his life."[5]

[edit] Television

After the dot-com bubble burst, Rose was hired as a technical production assistant for The Screen Savers. He began appearing on-air, most notably in "Dark Tip" segments, and also on Unscrewed with Martin Sargent known as the "Dark Tipper," where he provided information on little-known or developing computing activities to the show's wide range audience. Rose would sometimes fill in for the regular show hosts on The Screen Savers. He officially became a regular co-host when Leo Laporte left TechTV on March 31, 2004.

On March 25, 2004, Comcast's G4 gaming channel announced a merger with TechTV. This move became hugely controversial among loyal fans of TechTV. Around May 6, G4 announced the termination of 250 employees from the San Francisco office by July 10, 2004, allowing approximately 80 to 100 employees to transition to G4's main office in Los Angeles, California if they agreed to relocate there.[6] Rose chose to stay with G4 and moved to Los Angeles. Rose was one of only a handful of TechTV personalities, including Adam Sessler, Morgan Webb, Sarah Lane, Chi-Lan Lieu, and Brendan Moran, to survive the layoffs resulting from the May 2004 merger of G4 and TechTV. He remained as the host for the nightly G4TechTV technology show The Screen Savers. Later, the show would switch gears, becoming the variety show Attack of the Show!.

On May 22, 2005, Rose announced on his blog that he had been released from his contract with G4. He left the network to create Revision3 and focus full-time on producing podcasts and videocasts. May 27, 2005 marked his last day of work at G4 and final appearance on Attack of the Show!.

[edit] Podcasting

[edit] Revision3

Rose and Albrecht presenting Diggnation live show in San Jose as part of nVision 08

Rose's entry into podcasting began on July 24, 2003, with the release of the first episode of thebroken while he was still working on The Screen Savers at TechTV. The show, co-hosted by Dan Huard (also from The Screen Savers) featured questionable activities, such as password cracking and social engineering. In the first year, the show had over 2 million downloads according to Rose. The show and its success was the precursor to Rose and crew starting Revision3.[7]

Revision3 was founded in Los Angeles, California by Rose, Jay Adelson, and David Prager in April 2005, just prior to Rose leaving G4.[8] Dan Huard, Keith Harrison, and Ron Gorodetzky were also involved. Most of them were previously employees of TechTV.

Rose's second videocast venture, called Systm, was released the same week of his departure from G4, with Huard co-hosting. The show closely resembles older technology-oriented formats of The Screen Savers, but takes more time to fully explain how to complete complex projects. In the first episode, Rose demonstrated how to build a war-spying box. Kevin and Dan searched for open web cams and managed to demonstrate the dangers of leaving cameras unencrypted. Systm and thebroken together made up the first two shows of Revision3.

On July 1, 2005, Rose and former The Screen Savers co-host Alex Albrecht began releasing a weekly podcast, Diggnation, summarizing the top stories submitted by Digg users. The show has become a success, averaging over 250,000 downloads per episode.[9] Through his show he has also become known as a beer lover, as he and Albrecht almost always open the show describing which beer they're currently drinking. During the live Reno, Nevada episode, Albrecht became sufficiently intoxicated such that he immediately regurgitated his beer after the taping. Rose, although not as inebriated, was still noticeably affected.

Rose appears infrequently on the weekly podcast This Week in Tech with several other former contributors from TechTV's The Screen Savers.

[edit] Internet

[edit] Digg

Rose met Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak while he was working on The Screen Savers (Wozniak was an occasional guest on the show). One day while having lunch with Wozniak, they were talking about the old days and the groundbreaking things Wozniak did back in the late 70's. Rose decided that he needed to "do something" and later came up with the idea of a user controlled community-based news website. In the fall of 2004, he withdrew $1000 out of his account and paid a freelance web developer $12 an hour to mock up a Web page and purchased some server space for $99 a month. He paid $1200 for the domain name digg.com, and the project began. Rose along with Owen Byrne, Ron Gorodetzky, and Jay Adelson, formed Digg, a technology news website that combined social bookmarking, blogging, RSS, and non-hierarchical editorial control. The website was officially launched to the public on December 5, 2004.[3][10]

In October 2005, Digg.com received $2.8 million in venture capital from major investors, including Omidyar Network, the outfit led by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen, and Greylock partners.

In September 2008, the company received a further $28.7 million round of funding led by Highland Capital Partners.

[edit] BusinessWeek
Kevin Rose on the cover of BusinessWeek

Rose was featured on the cover of BusinessWeek for the August 14, 2006 issue. The cover text was "How This Kid Made $60 Million In 18 Months". The story mainly covered his success as a young entrepreneur and explained how he risked it all to make Digg.com a reality. It also says he lost his girlfriend during the launch and that money meant for a house deposit payment was instead used to fund his idea.[3]

On the August 6, 2006, edition of this WEEK in TECH, Rose stated that he was not told that his picture would definitely be on the cover, and had asked that they not use the two-thumbs-up pose. John C. Dvorak stated that the cover and the article were insulting because of the unprofessional way they portrayed Kevin. Dvorak also noted that BusinessWeek characterized Kevin as "Tom Cruise's doughier little brother" and compared Diggnation to Wayne's World. Kevin explained that Digg is still not a profitable website (at the time of the article), stating, "I still have to save up for a couch", though Rose hoped it would be in the near future once Digg establishes the right advertising partnerships. The "$60 million" stated by BusinessWeek was obtained by assessing the value of Digg.com and taking Kevin's 30-40% ownership.

[edit] Saturday Night Magazine

The November 2008 issue of Saturday Night Magazine discusses how Rose created and developed Digg.com in its Destination Success feature. [11]

[edit] Inc. Magazine

Kevin was featured on the cover of Inc. The cover text was "The Hottest Small Company in America"

[edit] Pownce

In episode 95 of Diggnation, Rose stated that he would be starting a second website. On June 27, 2007, Rose, Leah Culver, Daniel Burka, and Shawn Allen launched their social networking and micro-blogging site named Pownce. [12] Pownce is centered around sharing messages, files, events, and links with already-established friends. The site was launched initially as a beta and by invite only. Invitations for Pownce were in high demand and were being sold on sites such as eBay.[13] Pownce was opened to the public on January 22, 2008. Pownce was subsequently sold to Six Apart in December of 2008 and ceased operation as of December 15th.

[edit] Guest appearances

Appeared on the first episode of R&D TV alongside diggnation co-host Alex Albrecht [14]

On March 11, 2009, Kevin was featured on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon along with fellow Diggnation host Alex Albrecht and guest Russell Brand.

On November 14, 2007, he was a contestant on a game show at NewTeeVee Live[15] featuring other internet celebrities such as Veronica Belmont, Casey McKinnon, Cali Lewis, Justin Kan, Robert Scoble, and others.[16]

Kevin was also featured on Tom Green Live.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

Sister project Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Kevin Rose

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c d G4's Focus On: Kevin Rose
  2. ^ Rose, Kevin. Diggnation episode 94 [Vidcast]. Retrieved on 2008-12-05. Event occurs at 11:10.
  3. ^ a b c "Valley Boys". BusinessWeek. 2006-08-14. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_33/b3997001.htm. Retrieved on 2006-12-22. 
  4. ^ http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_33/b3997001.htm
  5. ^ http://valleywag.com/tech/entanglements/kevin-rose-reunites-with-love-of-his-life-277854.php
  6. ^ Comcast Fires TechTV Staff
  7. ^ Kevin Rose: ‘kill your television’ and join me at Revision3 | Digital Markets | ZDNet.com
  8. ^ "About Revision3: History/Staff Lisiting". http://revision3.com/about. Retrieved on 2008-02-05. 
  9. ^ Helft, Miguel. "Young Internet Producers, Bankrolled, Are Seeking Act II". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/25/technology/25digg.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin. Retrieved on 2008-02-05. 
  10. ^ MacManus, Richard (2006-02-01). "Interview with Digg founder Kevin Rose, Part 1". ZDNet. http://blogs.zdnet.com/web2explorer/index.php?p=108. Retrieved on 2006-07-15. 
  11. ^ Gordon, Jillian (November 2008). "http://www.snmag.com/MAGAZINE/Destination-Success/Digg.com-Founder-Kevin-Rose.html Digg.com Founder, Kevin Rose. Saturday Night Magazine.
  12. ^ "Kevin ‘Digg’ Rose goes for 3rd startup". GigaOM. 2007-05-09. http://gigaom.com/2007/05/09/kevin-rose-new-company/. Retrieved on 2007-05-11. 
  13. ^ Ricadela, Aaron (2007-07-10). "Investors Digg Kevin Rose". BusinessWeek online. The McGraw-Hill Companies. http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jul2007/tc2007079_099992.htm?. Retrieved on 2007-07-15. 
  14. ^ http://ftp.kw.bbc.co.uk/backstage/index.whtml
  15. ^ Web Video Celebrity Game Show — NewTeeVee Live
  16. ^ http://www.forbes.com/businesswire/feeds/businesswire/2007/10/31/businesswire20071031005523r1.html
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