Once high flying social news site Digg, dug down and laid off 10% of its workforce. Digg once owned the social news space. Today Facebook, Twitter, Huffington Post, WebGuild blog and hundreds of other similar sites compete with Digg in one way or another. Before Digg’s biggest problem was denying takeover rumors on a weekly basis. The company reportedly turned a $100 million takeover offer from AOL, then it was said it turned down a $200 million takeover offer from Yahoo, a $400 million takeover offer from Google. While the company waited around for a billion dollar offer, Web 2.0 died and now it looks like there are no buyers. Also, competition is increasing and the site is getting lost. I have not been to the site in ages and frankly don’t know anyone that does. I hope things work out and Digg digs itself and prospers. Below is Digg Founder Kevin Rose’s email to Digg employees.

Hey everyone,

This morning we faced the difficult task of reducing our team by about 10%. This was an emotional and rough morning for everyone involved. Laying off dedicated and hard working individuals is extremely difficult, but we tried our best to treat everyone with the utmost respect and support. I hope all of you will join me in the effort to assist all of those affected, be it as a reference or a referring source and most importantly, as a friend.

This is one of the hardest decisions we’ve had to make recently but we strongly believe that it is the right decision for the long-term 
health of the company. In order to achieve our goals, we are putting more emphasis on the engineering and development efforts. In fact, we are still hiring for these teams as they are critical in getting us to where we need to be for the future, for our impending upcoming redesign and much beyond. The only way for us to truly succeed is to adapt and adjust as necessary.

I’m sure there will be many follow-
up questions to this email. So, we’ll be holding an all hands today at 3pm where you can ask questions and share your comments.

Thanks,

Kevin