For two months after he launched digg.com, Kevin Rose didn't need an alarm clock. "By 6 a.m., I was up and on the computer," he recalls. "It was the sheer fear of not knowing what was on my own home page."
Here's why: Seasoned editors do not deliberate over Digg's front page. It's strictly a popularity contest. Users post news stories and images—found anywhere from the websites of big newspapers to small blogs—and with the click of a button, other users either "digg" the items (meaning they like them) or "bury" them (meaning they don't). On a given day, you can find breaking news about Iraq next to such headlines as "Bacon Flavored Jelly Beans!" and "Another Road Sign Warns of Zombies." "Sometimes you'll look at two headlines and say, No sane editor would ever put these next to each other," says Rose, 32. "That's part of the charm."
Today, the site 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. (Neither company will comment.)
Rose says a big cash-in was never part of his plan. When he started Digg, he thought, "If this can pay my rent and I can chill in my apartment and drink my tea and have an awesome little office, that'd be more than I could ask for." It's the kind of dream you'd expect from a Web wunderkind. As a child in Las Vegas, Rose was "the most unpopular kid in school," who at age eight spent hours on his family's Commodore 64, typing code to summon an animated balloon. In the early '90s, he persuaded his parents to buy him his own computer, which he used to talk tech with other "nerds" in chat rooms.
Rose's passion sometimes took precedence over schoolwork, prompting his mother to confiscate his keyboard when bad report cards arrived. "I drilled a hole in my desk and put a chain through it so she couldn't take it again," Rose says. At 15, he was repairing computers. By 19, he had a computer-support job at the Department of Energy's Nevada Test Site while he was going to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. And by 21, he'd dropped out and moved to Silicon Valley.
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. By 2005, Digg's monthly traffic had hit 200,000, and he'd hired a CEO and a staff and raised $2.8 million. Today, Digg is among the most-visited sites in the United States.
Like many sites, Digg hasn't yet figured out how to transform its traffic into profit. Nonetheless, it continues to evolve. Digg now recommends stories to users based on other stories they like. It also lets them vote on questions they want to ask politicians and celebrities.
In the meantime, Rose is sleeping through the night. He still checks the home page every morning when he gets up. But he makes a cup of tea first, then sits back to enjoy the mutiny.
Getting Ahead with Kevin Rose
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. You can always kill anything you don't like. Other than that, hold off as long as possible before taking investments, because the longer you wait, the higher your valuation and the less of your company you'll have to give away.
Q. Are you ever off the computer?
A. It's easy to get lost in the computer; I probably spend 12 to 14 hours a day on it. But on the weekends, I need to unplug. As I get older, I realize I can't live online. It's going to burn me out or kill me. I also just got glasses for the first time in my life.
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. In my family, we've each followed our passions in life. That's the most important thing.
Q. Are there certain entrepreneurs or businesspeople who've inspired you?
A. Growing up, it was Bill Gates for sure. And of course, Steve Jobs. I love the fact that he pays extreme attention to detail in his products. There's something about opening an Apple product and everything from the lettering on the manual to the way it's packaged is perfect—that means a lot.
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译文:
挖掘你的梦想
digg.com 这个网站发布后的两个月内，Kevin Rose 根本就不需要闹钟。“到了6点，我就起来然后打开电脑，”他回想着，“那种对自己的主页发生了什么事一无所知的恐惧让我再也睡不着了。”
为什么经验老道的编辑们不去研讨Digg的首页，那是因为严格上讲，它是一种知名度追逐赛。 —用户可发布新闻和图片－其出处之广泛，大至知名报纸的网站，小至个人博客。只要鼠标一点，其他用户就可以“挖”（表示喜欢），或者是埋（表示讨厌）那些内容。比如关于伊拉克的突发新闻，旁边的标题则是“培根风味糖豆”或者“另一个僵尸警告路标”，这种现象，随便哪一天你都能看到。“有时候你看着两个标题想着任何人一个有理智的编辑都不会这样排放的，”罗司说，”不过这也就是魅力所在。“
起初他是把它作为一种“试验”.不过几个月后他就辞去了工作。时至今日，该网站一个月就有三千五百万来自世界各地的访问者。 主页上的一个链接就能产生网络交通堵塞，一个网络新手在经历此后也能变成熟练者-或者使管理部善的小型网页产生崩溃。投资者就是看中于这想法所能产生的价值。就在去年九月份，它就从一家新的风险投资基金获得2千8百7十万。然而很多人认为它的价值远远不止如此。 据报道去年夏天，谷歌就曾以的2千万的价格与之进行交涉。 (虽然双方对此都不给予评论)
他说计划中根本就没想过要赚大钱。开始创办时他就想过要是这足够支付房租，让他能在公寓里凉快凉快，喝着茶有个小办公室，所求不过如此。 赚大钱的梦想，只能指望网络神通了。作为一名生长于拉斯维加斯的小孩，他是学校里最不起眼的孩子，八岁时就长期玩家里的Commodore64，还编码来操作动画气球。九十年代初便说服父母给他买台电脑，用来上网和别人在聊天室交流科技。
Rose 对电脑的痴迷有时都让他顾不上学习，而当糟糕的成绩报告送来时，他妈妈就急了，将他的键盘给没收了。“我在桌子上钻了个洞，往其中穿了条铁链这样她就再也不能把它拿走了，”Rose说道。15岁时，他就会修电脑。到了19岁，在落衫机内华达上大学时就已经在内华达测试基地的能源部门担任一名电脑维修人员。而到了21岁，则辍学搬到了硅谷。
2004年在主持关于科技发展趋势的有线新闻节目时，Rose就有了创建Digg的想法。想Facebook的社会网络站点才刚流行，就吸引着那些想发布照片、链接、和视频然后与别人讨论的用户们。Rose创造新闻网站也就用了同样的构思。它最初发布于2004年11月。“这是一场试验，”他说，“我想知道人们会发布什么样的新闻，这新闻内容是否有质量。”但是当访问人数达到一个月几千个-足够到获取广告-Rose就辞掉工作。到了2005年，Digg的月点击率就有200.000，于是他聘请了一名总执行官，一个员工，集资了280万美元。如今Digg是美国访问率最高的网站之一。
就像很多网站一样，Digg也还没琢磨出如果让这爆满的点击率带来利益。尽管如此，它还是继续发展。Digg现在根据用户喜欢的故事来推荐类似的故事。它也让用户投票选择他们想要向政治家和名人问的问题。
同时，Rose晚上睡觉，每天早晨起来后仍会查看下网页，不过他试先泡杯茶，然后坐下来享受“交通混乱”。