In a conversation with Digg founder Kevin Rose tonight at The Lobby conference in Hawaii, he mentioned that Digg would be adding an Images category on top of the existing News, Video and Podcasts.
This was originally mentioned in a Digg blog post back in August – Rose says the feature will launch by end of year. Lots of images are already uploaded to Digg today; the new category, like video, will better organize the information.
When a user bookmarks a URL and selects an image from the bookmarked page, a thumbnail will be auto-created for inclusion in the Digg post (very similar to how Digg Video looks today).
Rose also said that Digg will clean up the taxonomy of the site and make it identical across all main content types. So no matter what sub category you are currently in, you can easily switch to other types of content for that category. Or just click “All” and see all content for that topic.
What does all this mean? Digg is continuing to add content types in a structured way, and cleaning up its taxonomy to provide an easy way to navigate the site based on topical interests.
This news is interesting to heavy Digg users…for others, not so much. But in a separate conversation with Digg CEO Jay Adelson, he talked about Digg’s efforts to turn the corner from a tech-focus to mainstream news. Some of the data points he shared with me are surprising. I’ll put together my notes on that and post later today. It’s been well over a year now since we did a podcast with Adelson and Rose. We’re trying to find time to schedule an update.
Really, what happened to talkcrunch? frequency of podcasts decreased to once a month and now is even less. Podcasts is dead?
Unfortunately, they waited so long – you now have to question whether it is really needed.
It appears that the separate VIDEO category caused more problems than it prevented.
So many good videos never made it to the homepage because they chose to make a separate category and segregate them from the default main category.
Also a member did create a Digg Photo website – it was nice, but really not that vital.
Probably too many categories and divisions may end up causing too much distraction
Alrite and then wat will happen to this site?
http://digpicz.com/
Digg is great. M$FT should have thrown them $240 mil.
It may be a bit late for this content category.
But the fun part is…while others are trying to make the so called
“Digg Killers”
Digg is trying to get back ….by getting into non-core content types.
http://www.meetingflex.com
video + social networking
Perhaps one of the most “cloned” web sites in the history of the net is about to “clone clones”.
How’s the full moon in Hawaii?
It won’t make up for the horrible new features Digg recently added: having to open new windows to digg your friend’s stories & shouting. Now half the stories on the frontpage are spammy sites promoted by shout-spammers. I’ve pretty much given up on digg.
I don’t think you meant ‘eminent’..?
New category? Digg —> Pictures —–> Pr0n
Mike — really interested in hearing about the shift in focus from tech to mainstream news. Despite the proliferation of social news sites, there’s still nothing out there for the mainstream, non-technie, non-early adopter crowd. My parents (nor the rest of my family) have never heard of digg. It’ll be interesting if digg can shift direction given their current size and community demographics. I wish them luck because we certainly could use more options for ‘mainstream’ news.
Shafqat
http://www.newscred.com
Yea already discussed, I think they would have put the image of digg cap rather.
Here is the digg images link it did not go in right in the first comments.
(Odd, the comment box seems to have eaten my comment. Sorry for the repost if it shows up later)
@11 I think there might be a bigger reason for that.
The only people who really care about social voting are the demographic that includes the techies and early adopters.
To use another example Techmeme does about 3 times better (in terms of traffic) than it’s more mainstream counterpart (WeSmirch).
Lifehacker and Gizmodo do many times better than their more mainstream counterparts.
Real people who consume news that falls outside of the generic blogosphere topics (Politics, Technology, Productivity) seem to prefere to consume it from more mainstream news sources.
Will this affect Digg? No way to tell. I guess it all depends on what you consider mainstream news. Even now, most of their “mainstream” categories (business, politics, entertainment) still lea heavily towards tech cliches.
Voting on pictures is nice, but mixx already does it!
Steve – good point, but if you take away the social news sites that have tech themes, the only real option for the mainstream demographic is Yahoo News or Google News. The first is human editors, the latter algorithmic. WeSmirtch is purely a gossip news site. There really isnt out there for 90% of the population apart from the two heavyweights just mentioned. You are right that this demographic seem to prefer mainstream news sources, but there really isn’t aren’t many options online even for aggregating high quality, credible and RELEVANT news apart from surfing from site to to site – not very practical.
Shafqat
(full disclosure: I’m cofounder of NewsCred, and we’re trying to address this issue)
Great point. Here is some free advice then.
The biggest barrier to entry for a site that tries to bring “Web2.0ified” mainstream news to the masses will be providing them with something that they can’t already see.
Most people who are used to brick and mortar journalism stick to a few sources that they prefer (NYT, WSJ, TMZ, Rolling Stones). They are invested in those sources and don’t necessarily have the kind of scanning behavior that we are used to here in the ’sphere.
To break down this barrier you need to make it really simple for them to get at the news that you are aggregating and break present it in a format that they are used to without too much confusing cruft.
Its these design considerations that make me wonder whether Digg will be able to break into the mainstream in any coherent way. Though, it does look like they are trying out new ways to organize their data.
Wake me up when Digg adds local news. I’m completely baffled as to why nobody is doing local news using the Digg model. So baffled in fact that I built it myself….
http://houndwire.com (beta)
Yes it is about time digg put images there!What have they been waiting for?
We here at http://www.myagentofvalue.com/ will still be using digg, I guess. Despite its appearance, it still serves as one of the most used social sites.
I think the picture section of digg will help boost picture hosting sites like http://www.echopic.com since digg usually takes down sites that host images pretty quick.
About time! Now all the bitching can stop over there.
I really miss the days when digg was just tech. Now they’ve gone, and are going into every little category you can think of. Thats all well and good, and good for them, but as for me, I still only go there for the tech.
Personally, I’m looking forward to http://pol.itik.us for the political stuff…
to the people over at digg: don’t trust Mike. He makes friends with you and then uses you to make his website look good. You are nothing but a piece of meat to him and the staff of TechCrunch: disposable.
What’s next after DIGG Pictures?
I’m waiting for someone to create a digg clone that only consists of digg’s original tech categories.
Digg will never be an effective mainstream site. Its too full of political flamings, specifically on the extreme left. At best, it can be a liberal oriented political news site.
@Riko Kwe
Digg replaces Diebold as the de facto electronic voting platform nationwide;
http://digg.com...book_Group_Ever
Looking forward to a new podcast with Kevin & his team – really enjoyed the previous one Michael.
Btw, I regularly check ‘TalkCrunch’ in iTunes for new podcasts but hardly get new ones…
It would be great to get one per week. I enjoy listening to them when traveling (hotel/plane).
Keep it up!
Oh yeah, as to Digg: love it. Much broader potential and ongoing innovation than Reddit and the likes.
“This news is interesting to heavy Digg users…for others, not so much. But in a separate conversation with Digg CEO Jay Adelson, he talked about Digg’s efforts to turn the corner from a tech-focus to mainstream news.”
Or more appropriately stated, “gamed news” through shouts, thanks to the Digg update of September 20th which deteriorated the quality of stories reaching Digg’s homepage.
cool down Kevin…you cant get everything under a single domain.
Digg looked awesome and interesting when it had just news/stories. We have youtube for videos and i dont think you ever gonu get closer to youtube(youtube has lot of interesting videos on its homepage). Now you coming up with images.!! wont comment on it before its up and live
What is digg?
http://fakestev...er.blogspot.com
I think Digg was much better _before_ it turned mainstream. Now it just has useless news. For tech news I think techmeme is a much better source these days. Say, but true.
Digg images, OK, but how about Digg Audio? There are some hilarious sound bites out there clipped from podcasts, radio and websites.
The article commenters so far have talked about the need for Digg to do three things:
1. Photos
2. Local
3. Go mainstream.
Guess what? There is already a website that does this. It launched 6 weeks ago to private beta and open beta 2 weeks ago. Its called mixx.com. The stories there are much more mainstream. Mixx has partnerships with mainstream publishers (USATODAY, Kaboose, Reuters). Their approach just fixes all the stuff that is wrong with Digg.
Want tech news? go to Digg?
Want to see something more? Go to mixx.com
This feature is likely in response to one of their “clones,” Yardbarker.com, which came out with their photo ranking system about 4 weeks ago. Photos on Yardbarker can be uploaded alone, or included with article posts to the site. Then, users can give thumbs up or down and comment on photos (even with other photos), and the photos get the same organization as the articles get on the site.
Yardbarker did it already.
How about a PHOTOGRAPHY category? I feel like a freakin’ outcast every time I want to post something photography related. I’m glad they’re at least doing something for pictures.
For photography flickr and faces.com are best.
this blog is quickly becoming null and void. 50% of your post topics are on digg, the other 50% are on facebook. There are other companies
Mike – you mentioned in your original post that you will follow up with notes from your meeting with Digg and some details about their efforts to go mainstream. I’m still quite curious…. should I hold my breath or move on?
My homepage.