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At TechCrunch's Disrupt conference, Digg's founder Kevin Rose presented a very candid view of the current state of Digg during an interview with TechCrunch founder Mike Arrington. Rose admitted that he and the rest of the team made mistakes when they launched Digg v4. He admitted that Digg's traffic took quite a dip after the launch of v4. Looking back. Rose also pointed out that Digg once got an acquisition offer for close to $80 million ($60 million plus earnout) during the site's heyday. While he was personally willing to take this offer, the Digg board decided to turn it down.

The Internet was in flames last week as popular social news curation site Digg.com launched the latest iteration of its platform, unleashing a groundswell of outrage and protest from a majority of the site's loyal users. A week later, Digg has begun to respond to its passionate community, making rapid changes and bug fixes as its exhausted back-end infrastructure struggles to keep up. Today I spoke with Digg's VP of Product Keval Desai about the launch, the company's reaction to the negativity from its community and how it intends to move forward into the future.

Digg has had one heck of a week. On Wednesday the social news aggregator decided it was a good time to make the switch to version 4 of its platform, which sent servers crashing and drove users bonkers. That was followed with overwhelming outrage over the buggy and feature-stripped new site, and today loyal Digg users spammed the site pleading for founder Kevin Rose to "do the right thing." This afternoon, Rose responded to the Digg community on his personal blog, announcing the return of features like "Upcoming Stores."

Yesterday we reported on the launch of Digg's latest iteration of it's social news platform. Due to server problems that hampered much of Digg's functionality (including commenting), many users chose to voice their opinions here on ReadWriteWeb. Yesterday we asked you to let us know how you felt about the new Digg, and boy did you ever. The vast majority of comments - both here and on other sites including Digg - are those of disgust and anger over the new Digg, as many believe the site's core functionality has been inexplicably stripped away.

For a few months now, Digg has been beta testing a radically new version of its popular social news aggregation site. Those lucky enough to secure an invitation have been experimenting with Digg's new social focused "My News" section which provides curated news feeds based on the activity of your friends and the people you choose to follow. Today, Digg has flipped the switch and launched version 4 to the public, but it hasn't been a smooth transition.

In an interesting nugget of Friday afternoon news, Michael Arrington of TechCrunch has posted an article featuring a preview of the upcoming fourth version of the social news site Digg. Founder Kevin Rose has published a glorious 1080p video to YouTube aimed at explaining the new features to publishers. Among the most interesting features is the inclusion of social network contacts into the Digg ecosystem, as well as the ability for publishers to auto-publish stories to Digg via an RSS feed.

Monday's sudden departure of Jay Adelson as CEO of social news aggregator Digg has raised a few eyebrows in the tech community as some rumors imply that it may have been a decision made by the company's board. Regardless of the nature of the breakup, it got me thinking about the dichotomous relationship some startups have between founders and CEOs, and which, if either, is more expendable.

Yesterday, Jay Adelson stepped down as the CEO of Digg and was replaced by the company's founder Kevin Rose. Soon after this change of guard, Kevin Rose announced some sweeping changes for Digg. First of all, the controversial DiggBar, an iFrame toolbar Digg introduced one year ago, will be replaced by basic links from the Digg homepage again. Second, Digg will unban all previously banned domains. All of these changes will go into effect once Digg v4 launches in a few months.

News broke yesterday that popular online Q&A startup Formspring.me had raised some $2.5 million in venture funding and would be relocating to Silicon Valley from Indianapolis. As a user and fan of the service, I am happy to see the company rewarded for its success, and I am excited to see how they can improve their already great product. However, as a follower of the national and global startup culture, it is a little disappointing to see the company leave their home and head west to the Valley.

On Wednesday, BusinessWeek released their list of the top 25 angel investors in the tech industry, naming Hunch co-founder Chris Dixon ahead of veteran angels Ron Conway and Reid Hoffman. Conway and Hoffman are two of the most influential angels in tech, and have invested in some of the largest Internet companies known today, including Google, Facebook, Twitter and Digg. Dixon, a younger, less experienced investor than Conway and Hoffman, snagged the top spot due to both his diverse investment portfolio and the superior financial performance of his investments.