Kevin Rose
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Kevin Rose | |
|---|---|
 Kevin Rose, February of 2006 |
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| Born | February 21, 1977 California[1] |
| Occupation | Founder of Digg.com |
| Website | http://kevinrose.com http://pownce.com/ |
Robert Kevin Rose (born February 21, 1977 in California U.S.[2]) is known for founding the social-bookmarking site Digg and as former co-host of the TechTV show The Screen Savers (later Attack of the Show! on G4) until his departure from the network in May 2005. He attended UNLV for Computer Science, but dropped out to pursue the 90's tech boom. After dropping out, he worked for the Department of Energy, at the Nevada Test Site, as a technology advisor. He later moved to San Francisco, California, and worked for several dot-com startups through CMGI.
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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. He sometimes filled in for the regular show hosts, and stepped in as host after Leo Laporte left TechTV.
On March 25, 2004, G4 announced a merger with TechTV, to create a new entity called G4techTV. 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 massive layoffs resulting from the merger.
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 Corporation and focus full-time on producing podcasts and videocasts. May 27 marked his last day of work at G4 and final appearance on Attack of the Show!.
On Feb 4, 2007, Rose appeared in the Super Bowl commercial for Go Daddy Inc.
Internet
Rose has become an Internet celebrity. On November 1, 2004, Rose formed Digg, a technology news website that combines social bookmarking, blogging, RSS, and non-hierarchical editorial control. Digg is now ranked among the top 100 websites worldwide (according to alexa.com, ranked #95 on average in hits per day). 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 the 95th Diggnation episode, Rose stated that he was beginning a second website. On May 9, 2007, blogger Om Malik claimed he had information from those who were familiar with Digg, that Kevin, along with first time entrepreneur Leah Culver, and fellow Digg employee Daniel Burka were starting a new company based on a product that was dubbed as "an IM competitor". On June 28th 2007 they launched their IM competitor named Pownce. [3]
Podcasting
July 24, 2003 marked Rose's entry into podcasting, with the release of the first episode of thebroken. The show, co-hosted by Dan Huard (also from The Screen Savers) features questionable activities, such as password cracking and social engineering. To date, there are four full episodes available on the Revision3 website, the most recent was released on September 27, 2006 one day after the re-launch of the Revision3 network, and over two years after the previous episode of thebroken.
Rose's second videocast venture, called Systm, was released the same week of his departure from G4. Also co-hosted by Huard, the show closely resembles older technology-oriented formats of The Screen Savers, but gives Rose all the time he needs to fully explain how to complete complex projects. In the first episode, Kevin 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.
Since July 1, 2005, he and former The Screen Savers co-host Alex Albrecht are now releasing a weekly podcast, Diggnation, summarizing the top stories submitted by Digg users. 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. They have been known to become tipsy. During the live Reno episode, Alex Albrecht became sufficiently intoxicated such that he immediately regurgitated his beer after the taping. Kevin, although not as inebriated, was still noticeably affected.
Rose frequently appeared on the weekly podcast This Week in Tech during its first dozen episodes with several other former contributors to TechTV's The Screen Savers.
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.[4]
On the August 7, 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.
See also
External links
- Kevin Rose's Blog
- Kevin Rose's Myspace Profile
- Kevin Rose's Digg Profile
- Kevin Rose's Last.fm
- Kevin Rose's YouTube
- Kevin Rose's Pownce Profile
- Kevin Rose at the Internet Movie Database
- Kevin Rose on Tom Green Live
- Kevin Rose on Cranky Geeks
- Kevin Rose as Pointdexter on TikiBarTV
- "In Digg Nation: Interview with Kevin Rose", Mother Jones, July/August 2007.
References
- ^ http://www.g4tv.com/techtvvault/features/35261/Focus_On_Kevin_Rose.html
- ^ http://www.g4tv.com/techtvvault/features/35261/Focus_On_Kevin_Rose.html
- ^ Kevin ‘Digg’ Rose goes for 3rd startup. GigaOM (2007-05-09). Retrieved on 2007-05-11.
- ^ Valley Boys. BusinessWeek (2006-08-14). Retrieved on 2006-12-22.
| Revision3 Network |
|---|
| Revision3 Corporation |
| Revision3 Shows |
| Diggnation | The GigaOM Show | iFanboy | Infected | notmtv | PixelPerfect | The Revision3 Gazette | Systm | Tekzilla | The Totally Rad Show | Web Drifter | XLR8RTV |
| Revision3 Podcasts Currently Out of Circulation/On Hiatus |
| Ctrl+Alt+Chicken | Geekdrome | InDigital | Mysteries of Science | thebroken |
| Revision3 Hosts |
| Alex Albrecht | Jeff Cannata | Jessica Corbin | Josh Flanagan | Joyce Kim | Conor Kilpatrick | Sarah Lane | Om Malik | Bert Monroy | Patrick Norton | Dave Randolph | Ron Richards | Kevin Rose | Martin Sargent | Heather Stewart | Dan Trachtenberg |
| Former Revision3 Hosts |
| Hahn Choi | Andrew Hawn | Dan Huard | Jonathan London | Diane Mizota | Wil Wheaton |
