14 DAY TRIAL // A very short while ago, Digg promised two things, a new website and a new CEO. And now, the company has delivered on both, Digg has hired former Amazon exec Matt Williams to lead the company as cofounder Kevin Rose, who has been interim CEO, will now focus on the technical aspects.
"After several months of searching, we are excited to announce that Matt Williams will become the CEO of Digg," Rose announced.
"As you know, I have been the interim CEO, while we looked for the right person, and I will still remain actively involved in the product, but am handing over the day-to-day running of the business to Matt," he explained.
"Matt has spent the past 11 years in a variety of roles at Amazon, most recently as GM for Consumer Payments, and earlier in his career he led Amazon's community efforts," he added.
This ends a months-long search for a CEO after former CEO and cofounder Jay Adelson stepped down from the position. His departure came as somewhat of a surprise and is believed to have been pushed by investors.
Digg has been profitable for quite some time now, but the site hasn't seen user or revenue growth in a while. Under threat from Twitter and Facebook, the site, which still commands a sizable audience, needed a change and it looks like there were internal disparities on what this change should be.
As Adelson stepped down, Rose took over his position, but it was a title he didn't want or enjoyed.
Williams comes in at a rather rough period at Digg. The Digg v4 revamp has just been introduced and it led to an infamous Digg revolt. Earlier this week, users pushed Reddit content to take over the Digg homepage, in protest.
Digg has vowed to make changes to appease the angry users, but it's still to early to tell if this will work or if the move will really have an impact on Digg traffic, long term.