Last night, Digg founder Kevin Rose announced that he was doing an AMA on Reddit (RDDT). Following the announcement, he immediately vacated the site and did not return to it for 24 hours. As many of the interested Redditors are refugees from Digg, they did not take kindly to this crucial misunderstanding of how exactly Reddit works. Generally, you don’t announce you’re doing an AMA unless you intend to answer questions at that very moment.
“Kevin just tweeted an Instagram picture at Alcatraz,” wrote one user. “Pretty sure he forgot about this.”
“Maybe it is symbolic of being trapped in an AMA he regrets,” retorted another.
Some time this afternoon, Mr. Rose returned to the thread in order to answer the (mostly indignant) questions that had collected while he was away. Perhaps to make up for his tardiness, he even took the time to record a few video replies to Redditors’ questions.
Our favorite response had to be when he opened up about that embarrassingly overused Businessweek cover depicting a baby-faced Mr. Rose making an overenthusiastic “thumbs up” gesture while donning a backwards hat and giant earphones.
Mr. Rose had once explained the photo to Valleywag, but not in such detail. According to him, he was jokingly making the “thumbs up” gesture at the Digg creative director when the photog snapped the picture. The hat and headphones were due to Businessweek insisting he bring props that made him look like a young and fresh entrepreneur.
According to Mr Rose:
“Who would ever want that photo to be on the cover of any magazine? [The photographer] promised me he wouldn’t use it….they don’t give you any say in that stuff and it showed up on the cover of Businessweek. You take a look at something like that and say, ‘God I really wish they would have chose a different photo.’ And another part of me is like, ‘You know what, I don’t care if I was topless on the cover of Businessweek, because it’s just an honor to be on that magazine.’ It was kind of bittersweet.”
Ah, to have the problems of the rich and tech famous.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohAOqC6suMg]
