Kevin Rose

Kevin Rose
Kevin Rose at Worlds Collide Onboard the S.S. Jeremiah O’Brien November 18, 2007
Born	(1977-02-21) February 21, 1977 California
Website	http://kevinrose.com http://www.digg.com http://www.revision3.com http://pownce.com/

Robert Kevin Rose (born February 21, 1977 in California) first became well known as an on-air talent and later as a co-host working on TechTV's popular show The Screen Savers (which later became Attack of the Show! on G4) until his departure from the network on May 22, 2005. Rose is also well known for his Internet start-ups that he has co-founded; Revision3 Corporation, Pownce, and most notably the social-bookmarking website Digg.

Early life

Rose was born in California and lived in Oregon for a brief period before his family moved to Las Vegas, Nevada. Most of his childhood was spent in Las Vegas. His first experience with computers began at the age of 8 when his father purchased a Packard Bell 80386 SX 16. Rose soon got in to the world of BBS in the late 80's. Eventually he was running a two-node Wildcat! BBS (and PCBoard) with a CD-ROM full of shareware for people to access.

Rose transferred to Vo-Tech High School in Las Vegas in 1993 to study computers and animation. Upon graduation from high school, he attended the University of Nevada, Las Vegas specializing in Computer Science, but dropped out in 1999 to pursue the 90's tech boom. After dropping out, he worked for the Department of Energy, at the Nevada Test Site, as a technology advisor. He later moved to Montreal, Quebec, and worked for several dot-com startups through CMGI.

Career

Television

After the dot-com bubble burst, Rose was hired as a technical production assistant for The Screen Savers. He began appearing on-air, most notably in "Dark Tip" segments, and also on Unscrewed with Martin Sargent known as the "Dark Tipper," where he provided information on little-known or developing computing activities to the show's wide range audience. Rose would sometimes fill in for the regular show hosts on The Screen Savers. He officially became a regular co-host when Leo LaPorte left TechTV on March 31, 2004.

On March 25, 2004, Comcast's G4 gaming channel announced a merger with TechTV. This move became hugely controversial among loyal fans of TechTV. Around May 6, G4 announced the termination of 250 employees from the San Francisco office by July 10, 2004, allowing approximately 80 to 100 employees to transition to G4's main office in Los Angeles, California if they agreed to relocate there. Rose chose to stay with G4 and moved to Los Angeles. Rose was one of only a handful of TechTV personalities, including Adam Sessler, Morgan Webb, Sarah Lane, Chi-Lan Lieu, and Brendan Moran, to survive the layoffs resulting from the May 2004 merger of G4 and TechTV. He remained as the host for the nightly G4TechTV technology show The Screen Savers. Later, the show would switch gears, becoming the variety show Attack of the Show!.

Rose announced on May 22, 2005 on his blog, that he had been released from his contract with G4. He left the network to create Revision3 and focus full-time on producing podcasts and videocasts. May 27, 2005, marked his last day of work at G4 and final appearance on Attack of the Show!.

Podcasting

Revision3

Rose's entry into podcasting began on July 24, 2003, with the release of the first episode of thebroken while he was still working on The Screen Savers at TechTV. The show, co-hosted by Dan Huard (also from The Screen Savers) featured questionable activities, such as password cracking and social engineering. In the first year, the show had over 2 million downloads according to Rose. The show and its success was the precursor to Rose and crew starting Revision3.

Revision3 was founded in Los Angeles, California by Rose, Jay Adelson, and David Prager in April of 2005, just prior to Rose leaving G4. Dan Huard, Keith Harrison, and Ron Gorodetzky were also involved. Most of them were previously employees of TechTV.

Rose's second videocast venture, called Systm, was released the same week of his departure from G4, with Huard cohosting. The show closely resembles older technology-oriented formats of The Screen Savers, but takes more time to fully explain how to complete complex projects. In the first episode, Rose demonstrated how to build a war-spying box. Kevin and Dan searched for open web cams and managed to demonstrate the dangers of leaving cameras unencrypted. Systm and thebroken together made up the first two shows of Revision3.

On July 1, 2005, Rose and former The Screen Savers co-host Alex Albrecht began releasing a weekly podcast, Diggnation, summarizing the top stories submitted by Digg users. The show has become a success, averaging over 250,000 downloads per episode. Through his show he has also become known as a beer lover, as he and Albrecht almost always open the show describing which beer they're currently drinking. During the live Reno, Nevada episode, Albrecht became sufficiently intoxicated such that he immediately regurgitated his beer after the taping. Rose, although not as inebriated, was still noticeably affected.

Rose frequently appeared on the weekly podcast This Week in Tech during its first dozen episodes with several other former contributors from TechTV's The Screen Savers.

Internet

Digg

Rose met Apple founder Steve Wozniak while he was working on The Screen Savers (Woz was an occasional guest on the show). One day while having lunch with Woz, they were talking about the old days and the groundbreaking things Woz did back in the late 70's. Rose decided that he need to "do something" and later came up with the idea of a user controlled community-based news website. In the fall of 2004, he withdrew $1000 out of his account and paid a freelance web developer $12 an hour to mock up a Web page and purchased some server space for $99 a month. He paid $1200 for the domain name digg.com, and the project began. Rose along with Owen Byrne, Ron Gorodetzky, and Jay Adelson, formed Digg, a technology news website that combined social bookmarking, blogging, RSS, and non-hierarchical editorial control. The website was officially launched to the public on December 5, 2004.

In October 2005, Digg.com received $2.8 million in venture capital from major investors, including Omidyar Network, the outfit led by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen, and Greylock partners.

BusinessWeek

File:BusinessWeek cover 14 Aug 2006.png

Kevin Rose on the cover of BusinessWeek

Rose was featured on the cover of BusinessWeek for the August 14, 2006 issue. The cover text was "How This Kid Made $60 Million In 18 Months". The story mainly covered his success as a young entrepreneur and explained how he risked it all to make Digg.com a reality. It also says he lost his girlfriend during the launch and that money meant for a house deposit payment was instead used to fund his idea.

On the August 7, 2006 edition of this WEEK in TECH, Rose stated that he was not told that his picture would definitely be on the cover, and had asked that they not use the two-thumbs-up pose. John C. Dvorak stated that the cover and the article were insulting because of the unprofessional way they portrayed Kevin. Dvorak also noted that BusinessWeek characterized Kevin as "Tom Cruise's doughier little brother" and compared Diggnation to Wayne's World. Kevin explained that Digg is still not a profitable website (at the time of the article), stating, "I still have to save up for a couch", though Rose hoped it would be in the near future once Digg establishes the right advertising partnerships. The '$60 million' stated by BusinessWeek was obtained by assessing the value of Digg.com and taking Kevin's 30-40% ownership.

Pownce

In episode 95 of Diggnation, Rose stated that he would be starting a second website. On June 27, 2007, Rose, Leah Culver, Daniel Burka, and Shawn Allen launched their social networking and micro-blogging site named Pownce. Pownce is centered around sharing messages, files, events, and links with already-established friends. The site was launched initially as a beta and by invite only. Invitations for Pownce were in high demand and were being sold on sites such as eBay. Pownce was opened to the public on January 22, 2008.

Guest Appearances

On November 14, 2007, he was a contestant on a game show at NewTeeVee Live featuring other internet celebrities such as Veronica Belmont, Casey McKinnon, Cali Lewis, Justin Kan, Robert Scoble, and others.

Kevin was also featured on The Tom Green Show.

See also

• Digg
• Revision3 Corporation
• Diggnation
• Pownce
• this WEEK in TECH

External links

• Kevin Rose's Blog
• Kevin Rose's Digg Profile
• Kevin Rose's Pownce Profile
• Kevin Rose's Myspace Profile
• Kevin Rose's YouTube
• Kevin Rose's QIK Profile
• Kevin Rose at IMDb
• Kevin Rose on Tom Green Live
• Kevin Rose on Cranky Geeks
• Kevin Rose as Pointdexter on TikiBarTV
• Interview with Kevin Rose at The Nextweb conference Video