Friday, May 11, 2007

Digging down Kevin Rose from Digg.com in Hollywood

Last week I attended the OnHollywood conference by AlwaysOn. In one of the panels (on Wednesday) was Kevin Rose, co-founder of the blog Digg.com. They had problems with the blog the day before (Tuesday night) because of users putting up postings with illegal HD-TV codes. Kevin Rose and other founder Jay Adelson with staff, decided to take the postings off the site. Then the readers and creators of content revolted against them. They then decided to put the postings back up.

Everyone including NY Times and Fortune wanted to talk to Kevin or Jay, but couldn't get through the PR-people. I did. After the panel I ran up to the stage, cornered him, introduced myself, gave him my cell phone and got him to talk to one of our reporters who was writing a story. It ended up in the only interview Digg.com founders gave that day and the days to follow.

Caroline McCarthy's article:
http://news.com.com/Digg+in+tough+spot+with+DMCA+debacle/2100-1025_3-6180998.html?tag=item

Seems like Wired had a hard time getting hold of the Digg people:
http://blog.wired.com/business/2007/05/digg_battening_.html

On the Thursday Caroline (who is based in NY) happened to meet Jay Adelson at an event in NY. Part of her e-mail to the CNET Newsroom:

"Of note re: Kevin Rose not talking to anyone but us...
Randomly saw Jay Adelson at a tech thing tonight (yeah, I know, random, had no idea why he was in NYC) and he said, "Yeah, we're going to keep Kevin indoors for a while," and then added that K-Ro is "getting better" with media stuff by the day, which (according to Adelson) is surprising for a guy who was in TV before he was a Web guy. Basically, he confirmed that they are concerned about him verbally screwing up..."

3 comments:

Matt said...

Way to get Kevin before they locked him up. I thought he was pretty eloquent - too bad he's backstage now.

btw, there was one interview taken the same day by Andy Plesser and Dan Farber: http://alwayson.goingon.com/permalink/post/13273

The clip of Kevin explaining the story at OnHollywood is also available here: http://alwayson.goingon.com/permalink/post/13331

David Nordfors said...

WAY TO GO! GOGETTEM MIRIAM!

Miriam Olsson said...

Matt,

You're right. There is a video clip by Dan Farber, from the conference, published on ZDNet News, which is owned by CNET. CNET News.com = ZDNet News is still the only site that got to talk to Kevin:)