Fresh off their new $100 million funding round, Twitter continues to scoop up talent from around the web to expand operations. The latest catch is Mark Trammell, who had spent the last two years working on user experience for Digg. Trammell will start his new job at Twitter in a week on the design team working to build a user research program.
Trammell is the latest in a series of long-time employees to leave Digg in recent months. In May, former lead architect Joe Stump announced he was leaving to do a new mobile location startup (now called SimpleGeo) with former SocialThing founder Matt Galligan. A couple of weeks ago, Digg’s design lead Daniel Burka, announced he would be joined Tiny Speck, the new social gaming startup led by former Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield.
Despite the loses, Digg still has no real peer in terms of size in the social news space. Founder Kevin Rose recently spoke with Sarah Lacy backstage at TechCrunch50 about what is going right with Digg and some plans for the future. Notably, Sarah asked about if upcoming changes will make Digg more of a Twitter competitor, to which Rose replied that he didn’t think so. Instead, he wants to leverage Twitter to spread Digg’s stories more, and to bring Twitter users into the Digg experience. Trammell, it seems, should be able to help ease that transition if Twitter feels the same way.
Trammell sounds particularly enthusiastic about his new gig:
I’ll be working with a new set of folks I admire (Doug Bowman, for instance) on a site that is changing the way the world communicates. Did I mention I’m excited? ‘Cause I am.
Trammell notes that despite his new job, he will continue to advise Digg on user research. Meanwhile, Twitter is rapidly approaching 100 employees.
DIGG is a very cooled off company these days. No serious hardcore web person wants to be there anymore.
and twitter wants to prevent them from getting back into the game. this is as much a crippling attack on digg as it is an interface add for twitter.
Seems especially strange since, as mentioned in the article, Kevin downplayed any fight they may be looking to start with Twitter.
People leave companies to go to other companies all the time. Kevin tried to compete with Twitter and failed. Digg and Twitter are not the same and can coexist peacefully.
is the guy in this pix taking a bong hit? If so, awesome:)
Nope, looks like he is drinking the Kool-aid
This is another comment from TechCrunch, good page…
He might be smoking some TEA.
cut to digg longtimers sitting around finalizing their suicide pact, looking one last time at that businessweek cover proclaiming digg’s impending moneygasm….
lesson: take the money and run, it isn’t offered twice
Wow. Mark is a very talented guy. Met him in June of 08 (3 days after moving to SF) at a LaughingSquid drinkup. Huge congrats to him.
Twitter should stop hiring graphic designers and start hiring server/network architects. 155MM should build a scalable web service…
+1
there you go, done
[input type="text" name="tweet" size="140"]
there you go, done
@shane
More people use twitter through other applications than their own site (or wap).
That might hint at something. Think hard. Think real hard.
Techcrunch: Design make site look pretty dur hur dur hur. I like pants.
I can spot at least 3 grammar mistakes in this article. It’s distracting.
Not to take anything away from Mark Trammell, but this really isn’t significant news. Very few individuals make or break a company, except at the founding and leadership level.
Maybe this article represents one of a hundred defections – then it’s news. Otherwise – meh.
Is this the job that Jeffrey from Threadless took? He left his post as Chief Creative Officer for Digg doing something in design…I wonder if this is the same spot.
MG what the hell are you drinking in that picture?