Digg Dumps 10 Percent of Staff

When former Digg CEO Jay Adelson announced his departure from the social news site earlier this year, he described it as a company maturing well beyond its start-up phase. “Digg Ads [are] doing well,” he wrote. “Our sales force [is] growing [and] our hiring ramping.”

Odd, then, to hear that Digg sacked 10 percent of its staff today for what founder and CEO Kevin Rose says is “the long-term health of the company.”

“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,” Rose wrote in a memo to employees.

“In order to achieve our goals,” he added, “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.”

That 2006 BusinessWeek cover, “How This Kid Made $60 Million In 18 Months,” must seem like a distant memory now …