Kevin Rose To Return To Digg CEO Position – Jay Adelson To Become An Advisor

Digg.com, the social news innovator and giant is reclaiming Kevin Rose, its founder, as its CEO. Leaving CEO Jay Adelson is feeling the “entrepreneurial calling,” and wants to move to a smaller company.

While Adelson has been the CEO of Digg for years, Kevin Rose has forever been the public face of the company in all media forms. Digg is about to release a much hyped, and much awaited, new version of their website in the coming weeks.

Adelson points out that “with the new Digg getting ready to launch, Digg Ads doing well, our sales force growing, our hiring ramping, and the company maturing well beyond its startup phase, I feel that now is the right time [to step down].” Whether this move, returning the original entrepreneur to the helm will be positive for the company, remains to be seen.

Although leadership changes in companies are common, especially in startup firms, to see this level of change during the calm-before-the-storm of the coming massive Digg updates is, if not surprising, odd. You would perhaps expect that Adelson would have wanted to oversee the new “real-time” Digg launch. Apparently not.

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As of this moment, we have not heard anything that contradicts what Digg has said publicly. That is, we have no cause  to believe that Adelson is leaving for any other reasons that what he has stated. Following, statements from Kevin and Jay.

Jay Adelson:

Got some news. After five years, forty million users, and an amazing ride, I’ve decided to step down as CEO of Digg. With the new Digg getting ready to launch, Digg Ads doing well, our sales force growing, our hiring ramping, and the company maturing well beyond its startup phase, I feel that now is the right time.

The entrepreneurial calling is strong, and I am ready to incubate some new business ideas over the next twelve months. As the economy exits a very deep recession, I believe that it is an excellent time for new companies to develop. Of course, I will continue to serve as an adviser to Digg. In the interim, Kevin has agreed to step in as Chairman and CEO.

I’d like to thank Kevin, the Digg staff and the Digg community for their support, insight and, most of all, their loyalty in turning Digg
into the force that it is today.

Kevin Rose:

I want to be the first to thank Jay for the last five years of amazing work. You’ve been a great friend and mentor, we wouldn’t be where we are today if it wasn’t for you.

While I’ll miss working w/Jay day-to-day I am excited to be taking on the role of Chairman and acting CEO, driving Digg forward on our promise to enable social curation of the world’s content and the conversation around it. We’ve been super busy on the product side getting ready for the upcoming Digg redesign and delivering our mobile apps for the iPhone and Android.

Thank you very much for your on-going support of Digg, I’m truly excited about the next five years, big things coming!