Reader’s Digest has an interesting profile and interview with the guy who parlayed a childhood fascination with computers into one of the nation’s most-visited news websites, Kevin Rose.
Digg.com gets 35 million different visitors a month. One link from Digg’s home page can produce a tsunami of traffic that can turn a Web newcomer into a real player–or crash an ill-equipped smaller site.
And investors are banking on the idea’s value; just last September, Digg secured $28.7 million in new venture-capital funding.
Many believe Digg is worth much more: Last summer, Google was reportedly in talks to buy it for $200 million.
Rose came up with the idea for Digg in 2004 while hosting a cable news show about tech trends.
Social networking sites like Facebook had just taken off, drawing users who could post photos, links, and video and then talk about them.
Rose created a site that would take that approach to news. It debuted in November 2004. “It was an experiment,” he says. “I wanted to see what kind of news would surface and whether it would be of good quality.”
But when the number of people visiting Digg reached a few thousand a month–enough to garner ads–Rose quit his day job.
Q. Is starting an Internet business as easy as it seems?
A. Oh, absolutely. Back in 2000, just to get a site off the ground, you had to buy expensive servers. There weren’t as many freelance developers. Now you can get a rented server for $100 or less per month and hire a freelance coder for 10 to 12 bucks an hour and get off the ground for a few thousand dollars.
Q. What’s your advice for someone who wants to launch a site?
A. People spend too much time planning and trying to get everything perfect before they launch. You’re never going to know what users think until you get a site into their hands. Get something out there, find out what the community thinks, then refine and rerelease, refine and rerelease. You’re going to get a lot of things wrong, and that’s okay.
Q. What’s the best business advice you’ve ever gotten?
A. You don’t have to work for other people; you can do your own thing and it can work out. Also, do something you love.
Photo by jeremyperson.