As the web matures, we’re continuing to see what I think is a good trend. Instead of trying to cram new features into services, emphasis is being place on improving the performance of the services. The latest to do so is Digg.
In a post today, Digg’s VP of Engineering, John Quinn, talks about what Digg is doing to try and make the site faster. This includes moving static resources like CSS and JavaScript to Content Delivery Networks (CDNs), and switching to higher performance distributed databases. But the one of the biggest changes is something so small, that it’s kind of humorous Digg didn’t do it a long time ago.
Today, the service removed the tiny 16 pixel user icons that used to appear on the main page. The funny part is that they were so small, that you will barely even notice they’re gone. And thanks to this tiny move, they are “reducing HTTP requests to Digg for a warm cache load by around 75%,” Quinn notes.
To be clear, Digg hasn’t killed off recognition for users who submit stories that make the front page, but only their names are listed now instead of their avatars and names. On the Digg story page, you will still see the (larger) avatar.
Quinn notes that this is just the first of many speed initiative Digg has planned for the coming months, and notes that they “will result in order-of-magnitude speed-ups for many use cases.”
Most users put pressure on services for new features, but the trend of speed over bloat is a good one. Facebook is going lite(r) (though sharing speed remains an issue), Google is going faster, and even the latest version of OS X is all about optimization. Speed, speed, speed.
[photo: Paramount Pictures]
I don’t think performance tuning in Digg is difficult.
Maybe legacy is the problem.
Digg removing user icons from the homepage is ironic because Kevin Rose just gave a talk at The Future of Web Apps London (FOWA) entitled “9 Ways to Take Your Site from One to One Million Users” where he promoted the very fact that they put icons on the page…
http://carsonif...-million-users/
Rose: “Another thing we did that I thought was really useful was on the permalink page we increased the size of the icon and name on the page. We gave them a lot of prominence saying “Hey, you really took the time to craft this story, to choose a category and give it a great title and description, and we just wanted to give you a little bit extra promotion. We got some great feedback on that.”
That’s the permalink page, which is a page like this one:
http://digg.com...eals_investment
Which you don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to see that the icon still exists there.
People still use DIGG? I stopped going on that site a long time ago..
PS. Maverick is the hotness :]
Yes, when you stopped visiting the site they shut it down.
Haha, good one! That made me laugh.
why dont they use the trick where u load all icons in one image and use CSS/javascript to slice it as needed.
You mean sprites? Sprites are usually static. For Digg, they will have to first generate sprites on the run time for the users on the front page, and keep doing that everytime the users change (which is probably quite often)…
what is digg?
It’s the home of the 10-best list (or any derivation thereof).
Just removing the little images helps that much? I guess that’s what happens when you have such sick traffic.
Digg has always been the one of the slowest sites around, nice to see they are working on it!
Great choice for the picture. I love that movie with Pete “Maverick” Mitchel, Charlotte “Charlie” Blackwood, Tom “IceMan” Kazansky, Nick “Goose” Bradshaw, Rick “Jester” Heatherly, Mike “Viper” Metcalf…
The site looks much cleaner now that those stupid ass images are gone. Nice work Digg!
I have read all diggs in the last 1 1/2 years. I think it’s a great site. Keeps me away from doing my real job.
Digg is dead. They tried to sell this ordure to everyone and anyone but there were no takers. These kinds of founders will soon crash hard and be forced to work as directors of business development at some no name.
I bet you’re one of those people who says, “I don’t understand how people keep investing in this Google thing!”
Love Kevin Rose… Digg, not so much.
Hindsight is 20/20, isn’t it?
Glad to see they’re doing this. It’s about time.
twitter.com is in need of some work, way to many http request’s and external resources that are not even minified etc.
To be honested I was a little shocked that such a simple site as twitter had not cleaned up the frontend code.
This has nothing to do with twitter. RTFA…
I still believe, with all my heart, that DIGG = DEAD!
Oh I know how to speed digg up. Make the front page look just like reddit.com. Most of the front page stories come from reddit already so why not.
I kid, I kid he he ha ha
two posts with pics of Tom Cruise today?
i sense a man crush.
I dont like the change. It may reduce load by 75% and thats all well and good but those small icons were noticable. And that was how I recognized meny of the sites users. If you had problems seeing them you must have been blind. I use Digg less and less though. Lots of crap over there and allot of interesting stories goes by unnoticed because powerful users with allot of followers always gets their stories to the top…