Does anyone really care about Digg anymore?

It seems like I’ve asked that question before and now it appears that Digg’s original founder is asking himself that same question. I’m guessing he didn’t like the answer, because CEO Jay Adelson is out the door and Kevin Rose will once again assume the reigns of the social bookmarking site.

If you go by Adelson’s internal email…

Got some news. After five years, forty million users, and an amazing ride, I’ve decided to step down as CEO of Dig…The entrepreneurial calling is strong…

…you get the picture that he’s just ready to move on to something new. Whether you buy that or not will depend on whether you believe Digg is still a fresh and exciting company or mature and boring. Personally, I think it has the potential to be both at this point, so I’m not inclined to believe Adelson’s motives.

Google Buzz lived up to its name in its first week. After not fully testing the product, Google launched Buzz and forced all Gmail users into it without a way to opt out. Then we realized they were automatically sharing the list of people we chatted with and emailed most frequently. Finally, Google backed off many of these “features,” and made it possible to disable Buzz (and not just hide it). But there are still some privacy concerns, especially for people who joined Buzz before the privacy changes.

Mashable reports that Google will be issuing a “privacy reset” for Buzz tomorrow. The reset will automatically show all Buzz users the settings page the next time they click on the Buzz option in Gmail, to ensure they’ve set their privacy levels how they really want them:

Remember when Twitter caused a stir among the development community, when it suggested you may never want to use a third-party app again?

Well, co-founder went CNBC and appeared to reveal just a little information about Twitter’s monetization model. When asked if Twitter was receiving a cut of the ads shown by third-party Twitter apps, Biz said “no” then went on to say:

We’re going to roll out something we think appropriate not just for Twitter users but also for the ecosystem when we develop this monetization platform, it’s not going to be just for us, it’s going to extend to all these apps that are out there that everyone is using.

Now, Silicon Alley Insider took this to mean that Twitter would create a model devoid of those annoying ads that are inserted into your tweet stream, but I’m not so sure.

Today, Umair Haque of the Havas Media Lab will interview Twitter CEO Evan Williams at SxSW. TechCrunch is poised to report—especially since they expect Twitter to unveil its advertising platform in the interview.

That’s not for certain, of course, but TC points to Twitter head of monetization Anamitra Banerji’s comment on Feb 27 that they’d have the platform ready “in a month or so.” (Two and a half weeks is apparently close enough.) They’ve put 2 and 2 together with GigaOM’s Matthew Ingram’s (Feb 23) report that Twitter is lining up major partners for a launch.

Twitter has long been excited over its coming ad offering. Back in November, founder Biz Stone insisted that “Everyone is going to love” their new advertising system. “It’s going to be amazing.”

“You would have to be stupid. You would have to trip to not succeed at this at some point.”

Those words may come back to haunt the former Bebo chief Joanna Shields, now that rumors are circulating that the social network is about to be dropped like a hot potato.

Back when AOL bought Bebo for $850 million, I was already speculating that the social network had slipped from its valuation high of $1.5 billion. Now it appears that the social network has lost users–down from 22 million a month to 14.6 million–and with it, it’s value to AOL.

What’s interesting is the predicament facing AOL. Due to some complex tax laws, it may actually make better financial sense for AOL to just shut Bebo down.