Exclusive Video And Screenshots Of Digg Version 4
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Digg used to be a place for finding crowd sourced news (or, more recently, lolcats). Now, it will be merely yet another way to share links with your friends. I get that enough on other sites (Facebook, Twitter, Delicious, Buzz, etc). In order to get any value, you will need to be following a large number of diverse and interesting people who post cool and relevant links. Prior to the changes, you merely had to type in digg.com in order to see what the "world" found interesting.
Digg had a brilliant concept- make the users the editors. When it started, it was great- it had relevant and timely tech and political news. As it grew, they found themselves victims of catering to the lowest common denominator (which equates to funny pictures, it seems). Rather than use v4 to figure out a way to change this (maybe similar to Reddits' subreddits?), they created a Digg-styled Facebook clone.
Yes, Top News is still there. However, it's been relegated to a tab.
I wish Digg the best, however I don't see myself using it if I need to follow and share in order to derive value from the site. It's unfortunately- Digg has always been a quality site (in terms of software and vision, if not content).
2. You say you get enough sharing on Facebook, etc. but what's funny is every time a new sharing/social site launches, over time, we've all grown to begin using it anyway. First we had Delicious (2003), then we added Facebook (2004), then we added Twitter (2006), then we added Google Buzz (2010). Clearly folks ARENT getting enough of it on any one of those sites, since each site has been able to build sufficient user bases. The Internet's a huge world, and different products will appeal to different groups; many can survive. Besides, if we only had one platform, all the privacy folks would be up in arms (as they get from time to time about Google or more recently Facebook) that X company controls too much of our information. Ultimately, competition/multiple platforms is a good thing. Digg entering this space only adds to that.
3. You can still type in Digg.com and see what the "world" finds interesting, however now you'll get to see what your friends/followers/"tastemakers" find interesting too. Think of it as a USA Today adding a "local" section.
4. At first, I agreed with your point that v4 does not appear to show a solution to Digg's lowest common denominator problem. However, upon further thought, it does. Digg has given the power to the user. During the "onboarding process" you select who you follow, friend, etc. and decide what your stream of "My News" will look like. Follow all brilliant people and you'll get interesting, valuable content. Follow idiots and you'll get great funny pictures of cats. Follow a mix and you'll get both.
5. Ultimately I can see myself using the new Digg, but it will take time to see how it fits into my arsenal of social websites. If it doesn't do enough to differentiate itself, it'll go by the wayside. However, as history has shown us, we seem to have no problem adding another site to the mix.
For the two successful sharing sites out there, hundreds are struggling (Digg included) or dead.
In regards to the rest of your points, there's no telling how the product will exactly play out until we have access to play with it for ourselves.
When you compare this to FaceBook who wants publishers to put stupid like buttons on everything everywhere, I like this new Digg approach better. It's easier for publishers, and keeps the web from being overridden with "like me follow me save me" spam.
However, FaceBook's strategy is much more conniving because by spreading widgets all over the web, they're collecting a lot of data about your browsing habits on third party sites. Digg won't get that from simple RSS feeds.
Not all that shoddy, though it strikes me that finding people to follow might be difficult if you don't have a Twitter or Facebook presence.
1. Digg should become the default way people like and share things on the web and, in particular, Facebook.
2. Digg should reflect shared content through the social graph, vs. showing me an aggregate view of all activity in the world. The former is social, the latter is not.
3. Digg should have a concerted Facebook strategy to accelerate their growth, focusing particularly on the Facebook feed (which was less than a year old at the time).
Three years later Digg is just getting around to this, but Facebook has already gotten to (1) and (2) with their "like" button and their new connect implementation.
Ho hum. To little too late? Sites like http://likebutton.me/ are in many ways more compelling than digg, which is still dominated by stories that appeal to a very narrow demographic.
http://20bits.com/articles/5-ways-to-improve-the-digg-app/
Also, FWIW, Eli White from Digg responded to my article noting the technical difficulty in implementing some of my suggestions -- difficulties which were shortly eliminated by changes to the Facebook platform. So I know at least someone at Digg read it.
I was an early digg user, and have stopped using it recently because I migrated to other communities like HN.
But this could get me interested again.
This could potentially be very major.
It could almost replace twitter for me, because the #1 reason I use it is for link discovery and propagation. This looks like it is built to handle it that very function from the ground-up.
As a publisher, I am really excited about that.
Edit: As an aside, I am glad that Digg kinda lost it's way - otherwise I wouldn't have migrated to HN (which I am glad I did). But now it would be cool to have both.
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