Digg Lays Off 37 Percent of Its Staff

By Ed Silverstein

TMCnet Contributor

 

Social media news site Digg has let go of 37 percent of its staff and two top executives are leaving, too, according to a report from  InformationWeek.

The news comes only five months after Digg let 10 percent of its workforce go.

Chief revenue officer and publisher Chas Edwards resigned on Monday morning. Later in the afternoon, CFO and human resources executive John Moffett said he was leaving Digg.

Moffett now is CFO at Vizu, according to his LinkedIn profile. Edwards has moved on to Google (News - Alert)-backed Pixazza, and will continue to advise Digg, he wrote in a blog.

Digg laid off 25 of its 67 employees, reducing its workforce to 42 people, said former Amazon executive Matt Williams, who joined Digg as CEO about six weeks ago, in a letter to staff.

'We must significantly cut our expenses to achieve profitability in 2011. We've considered all of the possible options for reduction, from salaries to fixed costs,' he said. 'It's been an incredibly tough decision. I wish it weren't necessary. However, I know it's the right choice for Digg's future success as a business. I'm personally committed to help find new opportunities for everyone affected by the transition. Digg's board members have also offered to help find placements within their portfolio companies."

Earlier in 2010, the news aggregation site launched new features that failed to attract a larger audience, and former CEO Jay Adelson left in April, InformationWeek reported.

Company founder Kevin Rose then took the helm, overseeing the redesign of version 4.

Despite the layoffs, Williams still has a positive outlook.

In his blog post, Williams said that many things are working well at the company.

"The team is listening and acting quickly on the feedback from our passionate community. We've been able to deliver nimbly on the new platform, with over 100 bug and feature releases to the website in the past two months. Our Diggable ads product has seen a notable increase in use by advertisers and clicks by users," he said in the blog post.

Digg is a place for users to discover and share content from anywhere on the Web. From the biggest online destinations to the most obscure blog, Digg surfaces content as selected by its users.