Digg Cuts 37 Percent of Staff

Matt Williams, CEO of San Francisco-based news aggregator and social curation site Digg, announced to employees today that the company will lay off 25 of its 67 staffers to reduce its expenses. “The fact is our business has a burn rate that is too high,” Williams said in a letter posted on the Digg blog. “We must significantly cut our expenses to achieve profitability in 2011.” Williams joined the troubled startup as CEO in September, replacing interim CEO Kevin Rose, who had presided over an overhaul of the site that proved deeply unpopular with some users. Also today, news emerged that Digg publisher and chief revenue officer Chas Edwards is leaving for a job at photo tagging site Pixazza; Kara Swisher at All Things D had that scoop.

Author: Wade Roush

Between 2007 and 2014, I was a staff editor for Xconomy in Boston and San Francisco. Since 2008 I've been writing a weekly opinion/review column called VOX: The Voice of Xperience. (From 2008 to 2013 the column was known as World Wide Wade.) I've been writing about science and technology professionally since 1994. Before joining Xconomy in 2007, I was a staff member at MIT’s Technology Review from 2001 to 2006, serving as senior editor, San Francisco bureau chief, and executive editor of TechnologyReview.com. Before that, I was the Boston bureau reporter for Science, managing editor of supercomputing publications at NASA Ames Research Center, and Web editor at e-book pioneer NuvoMedia. I have a B.A. in the history of science from Harvard College and a PhD in the history and social study of science and technology from MIT. I've published articles in Science, Technology Review, IEEE Spectrum, Encyclopaedia Brittanica, Technology and Culture, Alaska Airlines Magazine, and World Business, and I've been a guest of NPR, CNN, CNBC, NECN, WGBH and the PBS NewsHour. I'm a frequent conference participant and enjoy opportunities to moderate panel discussions and on-stage chats. My personal site: waderoush.com My social media coordinates: Twitter: @wroush Facebook: facebook.com/wade.roush LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/waderoush Google+ : google.com/+WadeRoush YouTube: youtube.com/wroush1967 Flickr: flickr.com/photos/wroush/ Pinterest: pinterest.com/waderoush/