Later today, Digg, which just celebrated its second birthday, will release a number of new features.
The primary release is the first content area of the site that isn’t news-focused. Users can now Digg their favorite podcasts (feeds and individual episodes). The podcasting homepage will list the most popular podcasts by category (comedy, gaming, health, etc.). Their aim is for Digg to become the first stop for people looking for good podcasts, which will have standard Digg voting, discussion, etc. The Digg team isn’t putting it this way, but it’s clear that this is an experiment to see if users will adopt the Digg model of voting on things to non-breaking news. If this is successful, look for Digg to launch new types of content areas on the site. Technorati has a similar feature ranking blogs.
The other big new feature will be the relese of “Top 10 Stories,” and area of the site where users can see the hottest stories at any given time, including stories that have fallen off the home page but are still seeing lots of votes and discussion. A separate Top 10 area is designated for each category
Other changes today include:
- Digg is now Widescreen: They’ve moved from a fixed width page to a flexible layout allowing users to make use of bigger screen real estate. Navigation links have been moved to the top of the screen.
- Video Enhancements: The main change here is a way to view videos directly on Digg in a lightbox. See screenshot for visual.
I recorded a podcast with the Digg team to discuss the new features. We also discuss current user stats, the SpikeTheVote story (Digg now owns the domain name), and updates on financings and acquisition (”no comment”). Listen to the podcast over on TalkCrunch.
Screen shots below.
Looks great! Can’t wait to see it go live.
Wow… it really looks like a major upgrade and UI overhaul. Can’t wait till it’s live!
I wonder if the embedded video will work for other video providers, not only youtube and googlevideo?
Any expected release date on the new design?
.
This is an excellent strategy – Digg will continue to improve and improve 
Can’t wait till Birthday #3
Just hope they eventually iron out the bugs,
while they are improving :LOL
http://www.digg...s/SearchEngines
digg.com (Out of Service)
Upgrade in Process. New features are minutes away…
Refresh It
w00t!
“Upgrade in Process. New features are minutes away…”
Exciting!
” This is an excellent strategy – Digg will continue to improve and improve”
Yes…and fits in with what they were offering before….if you can keep the surfers there…why not…..
Good luck to the Digg team (as if they need it)
digg closes for an upgrade and Michael already has the news..
I honestly start to dislike digg (the content that is) more and more ever since they stopped focusing on technology news.
It’s currently updating. I wonder how long it will be down….
Digg’s commentary system is their weakest link. It’s such a horrid format for discussions and the karma system is completely out of whack. I go to Digg for the news but stay at Slashdot/MeFi for the insight.
Reddit is starting to become more and more appealing as well because they’re actually a lot better than digg at comments and the culture around it isn’t as annoying as the Digg-tards.
As Digg gains more and more momentum to be mainstream we will see that it no longer becomes a barometer of cool but just another established website beaten by fragmented niche sites.
“As Digg gains more and more momentum to be mainstream we will see that it no longer becomes a barometer of cool but just another established website beaten by fragmented niche sites.”
I fully agree with Alaska Miller on that!
Just another nice feature for the “small” niche of users that are on Digg 24/7. Won’t increase # of users.
Any updates on how a story goes to front page, and how a story get buried? I think that’s what most diggers are concerned most. Reading digg is one thing, but being a digger is another thing. I think most diggers like funny IT stories than serious stories.
-Mike
Tech Tutorials: http://www.hotcoding.com
I can’t wait =P
http://blog.digg.com – see a video preview.
Changes look good. I agree with another user about their discussion threads though, one layer of replies doesn’t work. I hear complaints about this all the time so hopefully they have fixed it (yah right).
Brilliant move by digg and finally some interesting news in the websphere.
What do you think their traffic is going to be like today!? Off the charts indeed.
i use to visit Digg at least 10 times a day . now i only visit it once every 1-2 day’s.
I believe its full of spam now , many many of the stories on the home page are simply not worth it , and the home page is very slow to load.
I think “Wisdom of the crowd ” is just crap , i hope there is an automated service like Techmeme but for the all web , not just blogs.
Will the configuration setting “SHOW ALL” comments finally work !??
Great move by Digg.
How long will it take for the Upgrade. any ideas?
what about search? when are they going to upgrade their search???
It just went live!
I had to hit Ctrl-F5 to get it though.
That’s refreshing. I find the sub tab links very intuitive. Good work!
The header where you get to pick between “News , Video , Podcast” is not clear when the page fully loads because of the ad space.
The ultimate design solution is going to be removing the top banner , i am sure whoever designed the new home page thought of it , but never give it second thought:)
Wow! The updates are GREAT! And they’ve got a podcast section now, too! Hopefully diggers will be kind to podcasters and show us some love!
This plays a little rough. The other thing is that the videos that I checked out are looped in through Youtube.com. There seems to be a lack of content – (I typed in The Who and nothing came up etc.).
My real concern here is how many video networks will be opting for our attention. How many of them will survive. Does anyone go to Yahoo videos? Msn videos? etc. Still its a noble effort.
The Who rocks, these sites definitely ought to have more content on them.
awesome article. thanks for explaining everything!
I like it, the new interface has more information though i hope they dont stray too much from what made the site great.
I only notice one issue – there is no username in the header – i think that needs to be added.
How come the entire web site must come down for every update? I remember the last one a few months ago also lasted several hours.
Any decent architect/sys admin can update a site/db no matter how major the changes without bringing down the entire site for several hours, you figure with 103 web servers, they would have the resources to do this.
I went today to digg, and found it much better. I personally don’t get why all the blog themes use a fixed width. It is a totally waste of space, and it makes all blogs look horrible on my 1400×1050 ThinkPad. I really don’t know who have started this trend, but i’m happy digg is not following it now. I wish Techcrunch would be next. (HINT, HINT).
The article with digg effect
I haven’t been to that site in nearly 2 years, once it started becoming a spam/affiliate link dumping ground… To me, this news is nothing more than lipstick on a pig.
do the diggs on podcasts clear out over time? For stagnetic material like podcasts isn’t this just going to become a top listened list? Maybe i’m missing something or maybe my opinion is tainted due to my own project.
Digg might have enough of a user base to get good conversations on episodes of the top podcasts due to its user base.
Seems digg is so good with news because stuff floats up and then dumps off as it gets old…isn’t a show like diggnation or tech crunch just going to permanently own the list?
Again take my comments with grain of salt due to my own affilitation and interest in recommendation systems.
Digg.com has some great stuff. Not to mention Kevin Rose, founder, is making lots of money from Google Adsense: http://www.john...-google-whores/
http://davidchao.typepad.com
Digg 2.0 – Did it really change anything basic ?
Don’t think so…
http://raghucs..../12/digg-2.html
All of the new features are awesome. And finally they made some improvements with searching, although it’s still far from perfect.
This is cool!
Here is a video about firefighters being called to a building that had burned to the ground 3 years ago. It was a false alarm, but brought up old feelings… http://peoplege...ith-big-hearts/
I like Digg. I am glad to see them making moves to expand their reach and hopefully, keep their position in the market.
It would be great if digg could upgrade their user community to stop being so negative and profane. The comments section of some posts leave one to have grave doubts about the future sovereignty of the internet & society.
Finally those ads at the top get more attention since you need to hover over more often now. Poor Kevin will now get out of depth.
Excellent stunt.
On linux firefox 1.5 the whole site crawls. Unusable.
Can David Chow stop spamming us with his crappy ass blog??? Yeah, yeah, you want to drive fast cars and date hot chicks…. DON’T USE US TO GET THERE, AHOLE.
Seems like they’re starting to really focus to their strength and advantage on finding what you really want.
@JAV: you know, FF 2.0 its out since like 2 month.
” The other big new feature will be the release of “Top 10 Stories,” and area of the site where users can see the hottest stories at any given time …. ”
Clipmarks been doing this for a while, it seems digg is about to “copy” the feature over.
My first reaction is that the home page is a lot more cluttered than it was before. This is okay though, as overall I think it’s easier to hit the subcategories. More importantly, it’s easier for users to discover the subcategories.
The main thing I notice though is that the ad placement seems much more optimized. Before it looked like the ads were just thrown in there where there was space, with little thought. Now we have the complex nav at the top of the page and the ads right under it. Also, notice your second screenshot how the ads are enveloped by the green border and how the link to the “older episode” has an arrow pointing right at the ads (and drawing your eye there). Also the fact that YouTube content, etc is played without linking out of Digg helps keep users on the site.
I expect there revenue to go up nicely from these updates. Great work.
Two things:
(1) I wonder if Digg is heading in the direction of becoming a full-fledged human driven search engine?
(2) You mentioned in kdice if we were aware of any other great wargames sites to let you know. I thought I’d mention that I run the internet’s largest directory of free computer wargames at http://www.dhq....u/freewargames/. This includes online games as well as downloadable ones.
It’s seriously going to take about 6 years for the Internet to become less GEEK PRONE.
Seriously, who cares about DIGG. NOBODY.
Terrible website. Pointless. Only once the Internet gets fiber-optic instant access will real people really care about this shit. Seriously. At what point will the element of Cool make it’s way onto the Internet (if not for the minute, like Facebook and MySpace).
The Internet sucks, and it’s pathetic that geniuses have to collaborate on stupid nation-wide websites to share ideas….pathetic.
Get it together, people!