Digg’rs turn on Kevin Rose again… is Pownce his way out?

Today, Kevin Rose and his team launched a new app called Pownce (video review). Somehow two stories made it to the front page this afternoon: Actual Pownce URL and TechCrunch story. I guess when it's the founder's company, we can allow multiple stories.

Reading the comments on both posts (over 300), they are overwhelmingly negative towards both the service but shockingly also towards Kevin Rose directly. After the Digg revolt over the comments system last week, and of course the supposed "digg breaker" from May on the "number hd" story had Digg "out of control".

Lastly, Mike Arrington notes, "Digg continues to grow". I am not sure I see that same growth. Alexa (crappy I know) shows them on the decline. I also note that practically every single time I load Digg I have to login again. How many additional pageviews is this generating for Digg as it pushes me to the home page each time it loads. Gosh how I hate pageview rankings.

While I am not sold that Kevin would leave Digg, with the apparent negativity growing and people like Rand Fishkin saying that Digg is driving the lowest traffic in 18 months, would this be a chance for Kevin to pop out from Digg and move on to a new opportunity while the goings good? Like a sports star leaving before it's too late.