Why Kevin Rose should become Google’s new Head of Social
11 May 2010 | blog,Uncategorized | 1 Comment
So the big hubbub in the social media world is that Google is hiring a Head of Social. A lot of names are being thrown around for this position but there’s one that I truly believe that stands above the rest: Kevin Rose.
There are three main reasons that I believe Google should acquire Digg and then place Rose as in this role:
1) There’s familiarity between the top Google folks and Rose since Google was supposedly in talks to buy Digg back in 2008
2) Rose believes in the power that engineers can bring to a company and Google is the penultimate company espousing this thought process
3) Rose helped create the social space and through a series of companies he’s either started or invested in he remains at the front end of the social trends. This ability to spot trends before even the earliest adopters do will be required if Google is going to become a leader in the social space.
Digg is currently undergoing a lot of change: Rose took over the CEO role and has since killed the DiggBar, all but axed the digg URL shortener and let go 10% of the staff. It could be said that Kevin is clearly putting his fingerprint on the new Digg before the illusive version 4 comes out sometime later this year. Should Google come in and make an offer similar to the rumored deal that was on the table in 2008 of $200M I think it would be hard for the investors and even Rose himself to turn down that kind of deal. It’s an easy out and even if the deal is two years late and even 20% less than the peak valuation everyone with equity in Digg still comes out a winner.
Let’s assume that this proposed deal were to happen. As a result, Digg effectively becomes a portion of the existing Google News page and gets the benefits of the massive user base Google has. Rose could probably continue to manage that project for the short term (likely the v4 release). Once completed, he could use the additional time that would be freed up by no longer having to handle the ad sales team and some of the technical issues relating to Digg to dream up, develop or purchase other forward thinking social media sites. With the purse-strings that Google could give him he would have ample opportunity to act much like Yahoo! did during it’s hey day: buying established social media players, investing in smart startup ideas and allowing those brands to live on their own underneath the umbrella of the larger corporate organization.
Overall it sounds like the kind of gig that would be a logical next step in Rose’s career. The big question is would he ever be willing to take that kind of position, if even for only a year or two. I suspect that if the deal to purchase Digg and bring it’s employees into the Google fold was right he just might bite.
1 Comment for this entry
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I agree with you, Kade. The only hitch I see is if Rose is willing to become an employee again, even for Google. He has had the reins for so long, he may see it as a step backwards and not bite. I think it would be a great partnership between the two. It would be very interesting to see the results of such a move and I really think us, the users, would reap the rewards.
Kelly
Kelly Hanson
May 12th, 2010 on 7:25 pm