Kevin Rose

Infobox Celebrity
name = Kevin Rose


caption = Kevin Rose
birth_date = birth date and age|1977|2|21
birth_place = California [http://www.g4tv.com/techtvvault/features/35261/Focus_On_Kevin_Rose.html G4's Focus On: Kevin Rose] ]
death_date =
death_place
occupation =
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website = [http://kevinrose.com kevinrose.com]
[http://digg.com digg.com]
[http://revision3.com revision3.com]
[http://pownce.com pownce.com]
footnotes =

Robert Kevin Rose (born February 21, 1977 in California) is an entrepreneur who first became well known as an on-air talent and later as a co-host working on TechTV's popular show "The Screen Savers" (which later became "Attack of the Show!" on G4) until his departure from the network on May 22, 2005. Rose is also well known for his Internet start-ups that he has co-founded: Revision3, Pownce, and most notably the social-bookmarking website Digg.

Early life

Rose was born in California and lived in Oregon for a brief period before his family moved to Las Vegas, Nevada. Most of his childhood was spent in Las Vegas. As a child, he was a member of the Boy Scouts of America. His first experience with computers began at the age of 8 when his father purchased a Gateway 80386 SX 16. Rose soon got in to the world of BBS in the late 1980s. Eventually he was running a two-node Wildcat! BBS (and PCBoard) with a CD-ROM full of shareware for people to access.

Rose transferred to Vo-Tech High School in Las Vegas in 1992 to study computers and animation. Upon graduation from high school, he attended the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, specializing in computer science, but dropped out in 1998 to pursue the '90s tech boom.cite web |url=http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_33/b3997001.htm |title=Valley Boys |publisher=BusinessWeek |date=2006-08-14 |accessdate=2006-12-22] After dropping out, he worked for the Department of Energy, at the Nevada Test Site, as a technology advisor. He later worked for several dot-com startups through CMGI.

Personal Life

When Rose was starting Digg, he invested $1000 into the site, which was supposed to be for a deposit on a house for him and his girlfriend at the time. As a result of this, their relationship broke down. Since this, Rose has been quoted to say that "no matter what happens with Digg, I won't put business first again." [http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_33/b3997001.htm]

Rose has had a string of public relationships, including a long-term relationship with his former co-host Sarah Lane. People close to Rose and Lane say she was "the love of his life." [http://valleywag.com/tech/entanglements/kevin-rose-reunites-with-love-of-his-life-277854.php]

Career

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. Rose would sometimes fill in for the regular show hosts on "The Screen Savers". He officially became a regular co-host when Leo Laporte left TechTV on March 31, 2004.

On March 25, 2004, Comcast's G4 gaming channel announced a merger with TechTV. This move became hugely controversial among loyal fans of TechTV. Around May 6, G4 announced the termination of 250 employees from the San Francisco office by July 10, 2004, allowing approximately 80 to 100 employees to transition to G4's main office in Los Angeles, California if they agreed to relocate there. [ [http://leoville.com/blog/index.php/TLR/comments/comcast_fires_techtv_staff/ Comcast Fires TechTV Staff] ] Rose chose to stay with G4 and moved to Los Angeles. 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 layoffs resulting from the May 2004 merger of G4 and TechTV. He remained as the host for the nightly G4TechTV technology show "The Screen Savers". Later, the show would switch gears, becoming the variety show "Attack of the Show!".

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 and focus full-time on producing podcasts and videocasts. May 27, 2005 marked his last day of work at G4 and final appearance on "Attack of the Show!".

Podcasting

Revision3

. In the first year, the show had over 2 million downloads according to Rose. The show and its success was the precursor to Rose and crew starting Revision3. [ [http://blogs.zdnet.com/micro-markets/?p=475 Kevin Rose: ‘kill your television’ and join me at Revision3 | Digital Markets | ZDNet.com ] ]

Revision3 was founded in Los Angeles, California by Rose, Jay Adelson, and David Prager in April 2005, just prior to Rose leaving G4.cite web |url=http://revision3.com/about |title=About Revision3: History/Staff Lisiting |accessdate=2008-02-05] Dan Huard, Keith Harrison, and Ron Gorodetzky were also involved. Most of them were previously employees of TechTV.

Rose's second videocast venture, called "Systm", was released the same week of his departure from G4, with Huard cohosting. The show closely resembles older technology-oriented formats of "The Screen Savers", but takes more time to fully explain how to complete complex projects. In the first episode, 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. "Systm" and "thebroken" together made up the first two shows of Revision3.

On July 1, 2005, Rose and former "The Screen Savers" co-host Alex Albrecht began releasing a weekly podcast, "Diggnation", summarizing the top stories submitted by Digg users. The show has become a success, averaging over 250,000 downloads per episode. [Cite web|url=http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/25/technology/25digg.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin |title=Young Internet Producers, Bankrolled, Are Seeking Act II |last=Helft|first=Miguel |publisher=The New York Times| accessdate=2008-02-05] 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. During the live Reno, Nevada episode, Albrecht became sufficiently intoxicated such that he immediately regurgitated his beer after the taping. Rose, although not as inebriated, was still noticeably affected.

Rose also frequently appears on the weekly podcast "This Week in Tech" with several other former contributors from TechTV's "The Screen Savers".

Internet

Digg

Rose met Apple founder Steve Wozniak while he was working on "The Screen Savers" (Wozniak was an occasional guest on the show). One day while having lunch with Wozniak, they were talking about the old days and the groundbreaking things Wozniak did back in the late 70's. Rose decided that he needed to "do something" and later came up with the idea of a user controlled community-based news website. In the fall of 2004, he withdrew $1000 out of his account and paid a freelance web developer $12 an hour to mock up a Web page and purchased some server space for $99 a month. He paid $1200 for the domain name digg.com, and the project began. Rose along with Owen Byrne, Ron Gorodetzky, and Jay Adelson, formed Digg, a technology news website that combined social bookmarking, blogging, RSS, and non-hierarchical editorial control. The website was officially launched to the public on December 5, 2004. [ cite web | url=http://blogs.zdnet.com/web2explorer/index.php?p=108 | title=Interview with Digg founder Kevin Rose, Part 1 | accessdate=2006-07-15 | last=MacManus | first=Richard | date=2006-02-01 | publisher=ZDNet ]

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 September 2008, the company received a further $28.7 million round of funding led by Highland Capital Partners. It has been reported that during this round of funding Rose sold off some of his stock, the amount has yet to be reported.

"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.

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.

Pownce

In episode 95 of Diggnation, Rose stated that he would be starting a second website. On June 27, 2007, Rose, Leah Culver, Daniel Burka, and Shawn Allen launched their social networking and micro-blogging site named Pownce. [cite web |url=http://gigaom.com/2007/05/09/kevin-rose-new-company/ |title=Kevin ‘Digg’ Rose goes for 3rd startup |publisher=GigaOM |date=2007-05-09 |accessdate=2007-05-11] Pownce is centered around sharing messages, files, events, and links with already-established friends. The site was launched initially as a beta and by invite only. Invitations for Pownce were in high demand and were being sold on sites such as eBay.cite web |url=http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jul2007/tc2007079_099992.htm? |title=Investors Digg Kevin Rose |accessdate=2007-07-15 |date=2007-07-10|last=Ricadela|first=Aaron|work=BusinessWeek online|publisher=The McGraw-Hill Companies ] Pownce was opened to the public on January 22, 2008.

Guest appearances

On November 14, 2007, he was a contestant on a game show at NewTeeVee Live [ [http://live.newteevee.com/gameshow Web Video Celebrity Game Show — NewTeeVee Live ] ] featuring other internet celebrities such as Veronica Belmont, Casey McKinnon, Cali Lewis, Justin Kan, Robert Scoble, and others. [http://www.forbes.com/businesswire/feeds/businesswire/2007/10/31/businesswire20071031005523r1.html]

Kevin was also featured on "The Tom Green Show".

=See also=
*Digg
*Revision3
*Diggnation
*Pownce
*this WEEK in TECH

External links

* [http://kevinrose.com Kevin Rose's Blog]
* [http://www.digg.com/users/kevinrose Kevin Rose's Digg Profile]
* [http://pownce.com/kevin/ Kevin Rose's Pownce Profile]
* [http://www.myspace.com/simplenation Kevin Rose's Myspace Profile]
* [http://www.youtube.com/user/kevinrose Kevin Rose's YouTube]
* [http://qik.com/kevin Kevin Rose's QIK Profile]
*
* [http://tomgreen.com/ondemand/player.php?video=153 Kevin Rose on Tom Green Live]
* [http://www.crankygeeks.com/2007/03/cranky_geeks_episode_55_guests.php/ Kevin Rose on Cranky Geeks]
* [http://www.tikibartv.com/detect.php?vid=30 Kevin Rose as Pointdexter on TikiBarTV]
* [http://uk.intruders.tv/The-Next-Web-Kevin-Rose-on-future-of-Digg-and-an-exclusive-feature-announcement!_a396.html Interview with Kevin Rose at The Nextweb conference] Video
* Kevin Rose's Guest DJ Set on KCRW [http://www.kcrw.com/music/programs/gd/gd080716kevin_rose KCRW Guest DJ Set]

References