Digg’s Kevin Rose can’t afford a couch

The founder of the news Web site Digg reveals more details about the BusinessWeek article, on This Week in Tech (click on the player). The BW piece claimed Rose had made $60M in 18 months, but Rose said BW got it all wrong. He is not a multi-millionaire, nor a millionaire, not even a “thousand-aire,” he said, adding that he can’t even afford a couch. He said BW worked up estimates of his worth, but that “it’s just paper fake money.” The BW article also said his company was breaking even. “Digg isn’t even breaking even, they got that wrong too.” BW photographers had him drinking a beer, among other things, for a shot they told him would be inside the magazine. He had no idea he’d be on the cover.

Working for a big media outfit, we can understand how the different parts of the big machine can get out of whack sometimes; it has happened to us, where deadlines, misunderstandings, and cover design needs really butcher a story at the last minute. This Digg story is a particularly bad example. It is really too bad, because we know the reporting team over there, and we’d been thinking this year what a great job they’ve been doing, and how they really get it.