14 DAY TRIAL // Digg has been around for several years now, but, recently, its importance has been veining in the face of nimble, new players like Twitter. However, it's not going away anytime soon and it is now working on a big update and revamp of the site to bring it more up-to-date with its, mostly indirect, competitors. The changes go pretty deep, but, if successful, it may mean a new breath of life for the service, though probably at the expense of some of its most loyal users.
The changes are cosmetic, but also affect how the entire site works. Digg says that it will greatly ramp up the number of submissions from tens of thousands to millions every day in order to get as much content as possible on the site. For this, it will allow content creators to submit their own stories, even automatically, to the site, something that has been frowned upon by the Digg community so far.
Also, in order to do get as much content as possible, it is de-emphasizing the role of Digg users in adding new content and the power the original submitters have. Users who add a new story will now have pretty much the same power as every other one and a submission will be considered just a first vote. This will give more power to regular voters, but it's likely that the biggest Digg users aren't going to like the change.
Another big change is that Digg will start looking at external sources when judging the ranking of a particular story, not just the votes of its users. It will monitor places like Twitter and Facebook and will push up a story if it's getting a lot of attention there.
Finally, Digg is looking to add a more social feel to the site, something it failed to do in the past, by creating a stronger social graph for users. Registered users will now get a customized homepage based on their own preferences and the stories their friends on Digg and on social networks liked. Digg has opened up registration for users wanting to test the new site, appropriately, over at new.digg.com. [via Read Write Web]