Digg Founder Kevin Rose Merges Watchville With Hodinkee

Content never falls far from the tree. Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg, a search site with a link-sharing message board with ties to the beginning of the social Web, has moved on from Google Ventures and an incubator called North Technology to explore options for another news aggregator called Watchville.

On Thursday Rose announced that his small team at San Francisco-based Watchville, a news aggregation app for Android and iOS focused exclusively on wristwatches, will merge with Hodinkee, a site for wristwatch lovers.

"As of today, this little web-log that I began out of pure boredom at work some seven years ago and has blossomed into, well, the web-log that hopefully prevents many of you from boredom at work, is growing up," wrote Benjamin Clymer on the site. "In fact, we're merging with our good friends at Watchville with the hopes of bringing you even more horological awesomeness every single day."

Clymer plans to remain with the company to write and think about the projects that best serve watch lovers worldwide.

Rose will become chief executive of Hodinkee, and plans to move to Manhattan by the end of the month. "Along with Benjamin Clymer, Hodinkee’s founder and editorial director, the team has raised $3.6 million from True Ventures and a handful of angel investors to continue expanding the effort," the New York Times reports.

While the report makes no mention of bringing in content about wearable technology, it makes sense with Rose's background for the fledging company to explore a techie approach. 

Emily Crume, director of strategy at Social Media Examiner, agrees. "Being a part of a venture fund or an incubator requires one to have good insight and the ability to share knowledge and teach," she said. "But in that arena where it’s not your idea, it can feel like watching from the sidelines. It is evident Kevin much prefers being a player in the game as opposed to being the coach.

Even with the niche topic, the Digg founder will once again go up against some huge competitors like Apple and Facebook, which recently announced they would launch their own news feed service.

Apple at its developer conference launched a News app, which aggregates news and content from publishers. The app, preloaded on iOS 9, could potentially give sites and publishers access to an additional hundreds of millions of readers worldwide. The service will initially rolls out in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. 

 

 
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