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 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.