Kevin Rose’s first decision as CEO of Digg has been to dump the controversial Digg bar, less than a day since it was announced that his predecessor Jay Aldeson was leaving the building.

The Digg bar forced links from Digg to be displayed through an iFrame, with the Digg bar sitting on top of every page. When first introduced it caused a storm, although the later option for registered Digg users to opt out did placate a lot of the original drama.

The dodgy thing with sites that use an iFrame bar like this is that it immediately inflates traffic; instead of the page view going to the linked site alone, Digg gets an extra page view on each click thru as well, despite only displaying the bar at the top.

Rose said in a post to the Digg blog that

“Framing content with an iFrame is bad for the Internet. It causes confusion when bookmarking, breaks w/iFrame busters, and has no ability to communicate with the lower frame (if you browse away from a story, the old digg count still persists). It’s an inconsistent/wonky user experience, and I’m happy to say we are killing it when we launch the new Digg”

The change confirms long rumored tension between Rose and Aldeson that first arose last year.

Kevin Rose Dumps Digg Bar is a post from: The Inquisitr

Long serving Digg CEO Jay Adelson has announced that he is stepping down from the position after a five year run that saw the social sharing site grow to the top of its class.

Adelson explained in a post to the Digg blog that he feels that this is the right time to go, and that “the entrepreneurial calling is strong, and I am ready to incubate some new business ideas over the next twelve months.”

Noting what others are also noting, he adds “As the economy exits a very deep recession, I believe that it is an excellent time for new companies to develop.”

Digg founder Kevin Rose has stepped up to the plate and is now acting CEO and Chairman, although it wasn’t clear from the announcement whether this arrangement may become permanent.

Adelson will remain an “adviser” to Digg for the immediate future.

Jay Adelson Quits As Digg CEO, Kevin Rose Steps Up To The Plate is a post from: The Inquisitr

WeFollow is remarkably simple, and that’s where its strength lies. The site indexes users based on user submitted interests via hash tag. For example, the front page offers the top users in categories such as news, music and more based on the hash tags submitted by the user themselves. Users can nominate three hash tags, and are automatically added to the index.

The site works both as a ranking and discovery service. Users are ranked by their number of followers under each tag. Visitors can then visit lists and discover users that share their interests.

The only criticism of the site is that it mainly serves to promote the A-List on Twitter, because to rank on the front page, or first page of most tags, you need to have a lot of followers to begin with. So far though, it’s not impossible to rank, although this will change as more and more add themselves to the site. For example, at the time of writing I managed to pop up at 19 on the tag web, but this is bound to change.

To list yourself on WeFollow, send a message on Twitter as follows: @wefollow #tag #tag #tag, placing your preferred tags where #tag is listed.

Kevin Rose launches WeFollow: a Twitter user directory is a post from: The Inquisitr

In the year end frenzy of the worst, the best, the stupidest and of course the inevitable New Year Resolution crappola that is clogging the InterWebs Kevin Rose has published his list of resolutions for the new year. Besides things like

• Building a better Digg (gotta keep the faithful happy)
• Less drinking (yes like that will happen – this is Kevin after all)
• And creating an iPhone game (don’t want to miss that gravy train)

He says that he wants to have a date with – are you ready?

Jennifer Aniston.

Ya .. okay …. that should work out well. A semi famous movie star with real money in the bank going out on a date with a geek who has a lot of VC money in the bank.

So Kevin Rose wants to get snuggly with Jennifer Aniston is a post from: The Inquisitr

Digg and Revision 3′s Kevin Rose is in a spot of bother after suggesting women should have their nipples cut with scissors in an episode of DiggNation.

The offending part is at the 4:17 minute mark in the DiggNation episode below, but if you can’t sit through it to that point, here’s what Rose said

“there is only one time you can strike [a woman -] if she kicks you in the balls, you have the ability and the right, to punch her in the teat – it’s just like that – it’s kinda like tit for tat [Albrecht talks then Kevin again] It hurts them, it does too – or take a scissors to the teat” (Kevin makes cutting action with hand)

Some people are upset with the entire comment thread, but I’d tend to side with ReadWriteWeb’s Marshall Kirkpatrick: where Rose really crosses the line is the inclusion of scissors.

Rose has issued an apology for the comments:

“I’d like to apologize for some comments I made in the latest episode of Diggnation, which came off as insensitive on the topic of violence towards women. Alex and I have always viewed Diggnation as an outlet to push the limits in a comedic fashion. Obviously, violence against women is serious and something we don’t advocate in any way.”

It was obviously a joke gone to far, but it won’t win Rose friends.

Update: as pointed out by Muhammad Saleem on Twitter, Rose banned 25-30 Digg users for “sexist” comments far less than this. Hypocrisy 101. Maybe Rose needs to apologize to them as well.

Kevin Rose not quite so popular with the ladies today is a post from: The Inquisitr

Om Malik reports a whisper that Kevin Rose cashed out some of his shares in the round, a trend among startups lately taking extra money, which might explain some of the money. Tek Populi takes the piss with “VC’s Are Livid With Digg: Wanted Cash For Digg BlackMarket, Not More Bongs and Beer,” and although it’s tongue in cheek, there are questions raised that should be asked.

Exactly what’s going on with Digg at the moment? $28.7 million for internationalization and some extra features? seriously? After $11.3 million in funding to date, a lucrative ad deal with Microsoft, and 224 million page views a month, they couldn’t expand without taking more money?

Negotiations with Google for a $200 million acquisition were allegedly terminated in July when Google walked away after completing due-diligence, raising questions then about Digg, and now 2 months later the company needs a big round to grow the company on a path that for most firms would be the natural budgeted direction.

At best I can only guess, but I’ll take a couple of stabs: 1: Digg is bleeding money or is only marginally profitable. How I don’t know, but foreign expansion and new staff hires would have been affordable if Digg was making money, and/ or 2. Kevin Rose threatened to walk, and the only way to keep him at Digg was to raise a new round and let him cash some of his shares. This point makes sense when you consider how many times Digg was suppose to be in negotiations for a sale, and that Rose has interests in other startups (Revision3/ Pownce), so you’d presume that he’s been looking at getting out for some time.

Let me say though that I like Rose, I like the company, and I’m not trying to hate on Digg here. However, I also don’t buy the spin. Either Digg’s not performing financially, and/ or Rose threatened to walk.

Digg funding raises questions is a post from: The Inquisitr