Digg to Cut 10 Percent of Employees; Says It Will Try to Be Profitable in 2009 (The Entire Blog Post)

Digg, the San Francisco-based news discovery service and one of Silicon Valley’s more prominent start-ups of late, said in its company blog today that it would cut its 75-person workforce.

A company spokeswoman told BoomTown the cut would be about 10 percent, but would not give out a specific number of employees to be let go.

In addition, Digg noted it would be aiming to cut costs and be profitable in 2009. It will also be hiring a direct sales team.

In other words, revenue does matter too, Web 2.0!

Here’s the entire blog post on the layoffs and more, by CEO Jay Adelson:

Brief update on Digg

Hey all,

Wanted to reach out to folks with an update on Digg and our priorities for 2009 as well as address some of the recent speculation about our business.

As we’ve often stated over the past couple of months, given the current economic climate, we’ve made the decision to take a more conservative approach to our expansion plans and aggressively focus on reaching profitability within the year.

This means we’ll be taking proactive measures to manage our costs including a headcount reduction in certain areas that are less core to this year’s objectives while continuing to hire for roles that will help build on our leadership position and get us to profitability faster. This includes hiring a direct sales team, in addition to other targeted hires in 2009.

As part of our aggressive path to profitability within the year, I also wanted to take this opportunity to highlight some of the major priorities for the company:

• Rolling out new features to grow and engage our community

• Building on our advertising infrastructure

• Building on our successful partnership with Microsoft

• Ongoing sponsorship opportunities

• Ongoing publisher and trade partnerships

I’m confident that with commitment and focus on these priorities, Digg will be an even stronger company in 2009 and will continue to create innovative features for our more than 35 million community members. I want to thank you all for your continued support and commitment–helping us achieve our vision of the democratization of media, and revolutionizing the way people consume and discover information online.

Thanks,

Jay