14 DAY TRIAL // The revamped Digg that's been in the works for many, many months is now live for everybody. There are plenty of changes, a new emphasis on social as well as a more personal experience.
The changes are intended to make the site more relevant to users today many of which turn to Twitter or Facebook for their news and to share links.
"I’m excited to announce that today we opened up the newest version of our Digg platform. We’ve been working hard on this next evolution of Digg (what we’ve been calling 'v4') and everyone here is really looking forward to hearing your thoughts on the changes we’ve made," Digg cofoudner and temporary CEO Kevin Rose announced.
"This redesign is a major revision of our platform – front end to back end – this is just phase one of what will be an on-going, iterative process, involving lots of input from all of you. We'll be pushing out features on a regular basis and tweaking often," he added.
The big new feature is the My News section. As the name implies, this section displays stories customized for you, a departure from the previous approach which presented the same site to everyone.
The stories in the My News section come from the users you explicitly follow, a model borrowed from Twitter. The hope is that this will make the stories more relevant to the user and will compete with the social networks that have been taking over the role once filled by Digg, for the past couple of years.
However, the 'old' Digg is still there, the Top News section is the same for everyone and shows the hottest stories on the site at any given point. But this too has seen some changes.
For one, it's easier to submit stories, just provide the link and the site takes care of the rest, the description and the thumbnail. Top users will also have less of an influence, perhaps encouraging more to share stories.
Another big change is the emphasis on publishers. Whereas publishers were forbidden from sharing their own stories on the site, they are now encouraged to do so.
It's too early to tell if the revamp is enough to turn Digg around and set off a new growth wave, but it's clear that the site had to do something to counter the new threats.