RIP DIGG – Digg’s Overhaul Upsets Many

Digg was bought by Betaworks in July for half a million and some multimillion-dollar equity. John Borthwick, Betworks’ CEO, spearheaded the purchase. Betaworks owns bitly and has invested in Tumblr, Path, and Kickstarter, to name a few ventures. A redesigned Digg was opened to the online public August 1st, but not without some significant omissions. For instance, the new site has no user profiles and the only way to log in is through a Facebook account — there is no stand-alone Digg log-in. Most glaringly, there is no commenting capacity at the moment.

Mapped onto Digg’s new single-page layout are categories like “Upcoming,” “Popular,” and “Top Stories.” It’s being reported that Betaworks has tasked three workers with moderating the entire site, and, rather unexpectedly, that submissions to the site must be approved by those moderators.

Among the reasons that Digg remained valuable — its obvious price drop notwithstanding — were its 14 million Google-indexed pages. (Visiting those millions of pages seeing 404 Error’s at the moment.) Unfortunately the new Digg comes without user profiles, all user history is wiped out, no Digg login exists (only Facebook,) no commenting is allowed and users have to submit a link via Facebook or Twitter. Though many users like the thousands who contributed to the RethinkDigg site are choosing to weather Digg’s transition period, a significant number of power-users have gone elsewhere.

The word is that only 3 employees are currently moderating DIGG and they only approve whatever they please, which are very few posts. Top News section is a Pinterest clone and the popular section is similar to a random WordPress blog. The users don’t have the ability to submit and choose what’s popular. At one point, Digg was news for people by people. Digg is currently community-less and everything is being handpicked by moderators. It appears that all DIGG power users have already transitioned to other sites. Our guess is that DIGG will die off quickly in popularity, unless the old format is brought back.

Digg is billing itself as the place to find out what the Internet is talking about — As of today that’s why beach volleyball sand doesn’t stick to players’ bodies. (Hint: It’s special sand without any bits of seashells that’s been developed to not stick!)

Read More:

http://www.digg.com/

Digg Getting a New Look With Direct Help From Its Users

This year, around mid-July, Betaworks bought Digg, a once-hyped Web destination for news aggregation for, reportedly, half a million. Predictably, the meager-ish number made its way around the Web, with echoes of “cautionary tale” on full effect. It seemed that Digg was going through the biggest downgrade imaginable, given that at one point, circa 2008, Google might have been willing to plonk down $200 million for the whole shebang.

But indicators are surfacing already that Betaworks has something big in mind for Digg. With the help from many loyal Digg users, who together contributed 3,754 responses on RethinkDigg, Betaworks is remaking Digg’s design, layout, and possibly future. RethinkDigg came into existence for the sole purpose of getting user feedback, and it’s working. Betaworks recently released layout plans for Digg’s new look. It will be more expansive with lots of images, something that was previously missing. A Digg iPhone app appears to also be in the works. The new Digg will be available starting tomorrow, August 1st. Will you be visiting the new Digg?

Digg isn’t the only buzz-y company that Betaworks has showed interest in. Kickstarter, Tumblr, Path, and Airbnb are just some companies that Betaworks has poured funds into.

Read More:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2407863,00.asp

Digg Launches New Android App

One week after the launch of the Digg iPhone app, the social bookmarking site announced the official Digg Android app is now available for download onto any Android device. According to the company blog post, the new app allows users to browse and Digg stories and comments and supports landscape mode for browsing story titles and pages that load in the in-app browser.

Digg tests new ads

In an effort to improve ads on Digg, the social bookmarking site has launched new ads to a small percentage of its users for testing. The new ads, called Digg Content Ads, are basically widgets that feature previous Digg homepage stories that are relevant to the industry or company that is advertising on Digg.

“At Digg, we think ads will feel more relevant (and thus work better for brands) if they feature the kind of content we look for online,” said Chas Edwards of Digg, on the company blog. “One way to do this – one that’s very native to the Digg experience – is to encourage advertisers to re-aggregate stories that have already been popular on Digg. The stories might be about a brand’s products or services, or they might be stories of general interest to that brand’s customers.”

Edwards also points out that advertisers cannot promote stories that haven’t already been promoted to Digg’s homepage organically. However, stories that have passed the age of promotion eligibility can still be featured. This means that although Digg Content Ads allow advertisers to re-publish existing stories into ad banners, and give those stories additional exposure with paid media, advertisers are not allowed to use this method to artificially boost stories into Digg’s homepage.

Digg plans to launch additional ads in the coming weeks.

Digg Gets New Designer

Digg has announced that Jeffrey Kalmikoff will be stepping in later this month as the new director of design and user experience , replacing Daniel Burka. Burka, who has been with the company for four and a half years, will be moving on to a new project called Tiny Speck. However, he will continue to be involved with Digg as a frequent advisor and design consultant.

Of the announcement, Burka wrote on the company blog, “Jeffrey has very strong experience designing a thriving community-driven website. You are the ones who make Digg tick and I am very confident that Jeffrey will be able to support you with Digg’s design. He’ll be looking for your feedback to design the future of Digg and I’m sure you won’t be shy in offering it to him!”

Kalmikoff is best known for his work on the community-centered online apparel store Threadless. In addition, he has been the chief creative officer at both Threadless and KinnyCorp.

Our CEO, Pierre Zarokian, to Speak on Social Media Marketing

Our CEO, Pierre Zarokian, will be speaking on Social Media Marketing on August 6, 2009 at Tech Super Club in Santa Monica, CA.

Topics he will cover will include: major social media sites and usage stats; in depth look of Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin; Twitter Automation Tools; Social Bookmarking; Blog Strategies and more.

For more info visit:

http://www.techsupperclub.com/Social_Media_August_6.html

Digg Add-ons for Firefox

Digg This! 0.7

Digg This! 0.7 is Firefox add-on that Adds Digg This! to the right-click menu, Tools menu, and optionally the toolbar… The Digg This! extension speeds up the process of submitting stories to the news website digg.com

The best thing about it is that it lets you know of the story has been dugg. Otherwise there are better options out there. When you use it to “digg” a story you’re taken to the submission page but nothing is filled out four you. Unlike the “Digg This” extension (or various greasemonkey scripts) you have to fill out *everything* when submitting a link. But my biggest complaint is that you’re stuck with status bar placement. Right now I’ve got 7/8 of my statusbar filled with stuff from other extensions. I’d really like to be able to move this someplace else. Someplace that I could see it better. There is no option to do so. It’s statusbar or nothing. I’ve got so much on my statusbar right now that it’s original purpose is almost gone..

Digg Firefox Extension 0.7
The Digg Extension for Firefox provides a light and streamlined approach to staying connected to the latest popular content on Digg. Everything you need is placed under a Digg menu found at the top of the browser.

Current Page Details:

As you browse the Web, you can see whether or not the web page you are currently viewing has been submitted to Digg and, if not, it lets you submit it with just one click.

If the page has already been submitted to Digg, the extension displays:

* the current number of Diggs the page has
* the number of comments the story has
* the last 10 Diggers
* the 10 most popular comments
* the first sentence of the story description
* previous stories submitted to Digg from the same URL (if any exist)
* any other stories submitted to Digg from the same domain (if any exist).

Clicking any of these options opens the Digg story in a new tab.

Content Spotlight:

You’ll also find recent story submissions, recently popular stories, the top ten stories, and the hottest Upcoming stories. For each of these, the extension shows the Digg and comment count updated in real time. Clicking on any of these take you to the story in a new tab so you don’t lose track of your current page. Want to try something different? Click on the Random Story link to see a random story on Digg.

Follow Your Friends:

If you are logged into Digg when using the extension, the extension will show your friends latest Diggs, submissions, and comments.