TechCrunch's Sarah Lacy practically writes an epitaph today for Digg following news that the company's cofounder Kevin Rose, the face of the company since its inception, had resigned to pursue a new and unannounced startup. The backdrop of her story is a detailed article she wrote on Rose and the Digg phenomenon back in 2006, when she, then writing for BusinessWeek, placed Kevin on the cover with a youthful grin and headline blaring how he was worth $60 million. That Kevin had shifted priorities away from Digg some time ago was no secret to those who watched. Same people.

In the end, we included some of our own data to give a more complete picture.Our assessment of the situation is as follows; Digg.com – Most data we could find indicated that it is VERY expensive to advertise on Digg for the amount of click-through you get. On Digg, this is harnessed by allowing advertising costs to come down if your ad receives a certain number of votes. Digg is the largest social aggregator on the web, so it attracts a very large and diverse audience. As social networks and media mature, their audience size is beginning to exceed traditional media.