Right now Digg.com is undergoing some maintenance (which says should last just minutes but has been a lot longer than that) and they will be rolling out the fresh new look that is pictured above. The biggest thing as far as the design goes is that the layout adjusts to the width of your browser (a.k.a. liquid design), instead of the static size that it once was. Also on the homepage you’ll notice the “Top 10″ stories located in the sidebar and the duration since the submission of each story is now in a bright red font.
Beyond just the eye candy there are also several new features that you can watch in the official video that Digg put together:
- Interface Design, Digg Goes Widescreen
We’ve gone from a fixed width layout to a flexible one allowing you to make use of your screen real-estate on larger monitors. Navigation has also been moved to the top allowing you to quickly switch between sections. - Top 10 Stories/Videos
Digg stories move fast, so we’ve created a quick view of the top 10 hottest on Digg, updated in real time. This list changes as other stories accelerate in Diggs – so make sure to check it often. Think of this as your quick pulse of what’s hot in any given section. - Videos Enhancements
Aside from giving Videos their own position in the top navigation, we have added a couple cool features: Top 10 hottest videos, and on-Digg video previews. Simply click any video with a play icon to get lightbox window in which you can preview and Digg the video. - Podcasting
Now you can Digg your favorite podcast series and individual podcast episodes. Not only can you see a list of the most popular podcasts by section, you can also dive into any individual podcasts to see the most Dugg individual episodes. And don’t forget – every time you Digg a podcast or podcast episode that is bookmarked in your profile and shared with your friends. - Profile Enhancements
Now quickly jump between your Dugg News, Videos, or Podcasts. With three separate sections we make it easy to sort through your own Diggs or the Diggs from your friends using the friends tab.
Definitely my favorite feature is that the videos play right there in Digg rather than taking you to YouTube’s video page, for example. That will save people a lot of time from having to traverse to an external site but that is going to make things worse for people who submit videos that are embedded in blogs, because now they will really be labeled as “blog spam.”
Overall the features are very nice and I want to congratulate Digg on the new design…now I just wish that they would figure out a way to prevent the Digg community from unnecessarily burying articles which is what got our site banned.
| Update: | Looks like Digg also has some new apparel. Thanks for pointing it out Curtiss! |
News Source: Webware
I definitely like the new means of navigation on the site’s categories and such….but it seems with every “feature update” it is more of a superficial update and removes more features than it adds.
I heard someone commenting on digg, that they’d removed the befriended friends list in users’ profiles, I never used this or even remember where it was, but remember people raved about it when it came out in digg v3.0 update. Also I can’t seem to find where you can search through your own dugg/submitted/commented/etc. stories in your profile. If they removed this, it would definitely remove the usefulness of digg as a social “bookmarking” (news) site.
The only new feature updates I can see are the implementation of podcast digging, and the ability to listen to podcasts on digg, and the ability to view videos directly within digg. I do however find it very strange that digg caved on one of their biggest voiced positions, that they would never attempt to implement features that took traffic away from the originating site. This was obviously so that the site who originated the content would not have it stolen and put on digg, and also so that the originating site would reap the benefit of ad revenue generated from being linked to from sites like digg. Them seem to be wavering on this issue with the implementation of the podcast listening, and the video view features that are now on digg. Though it surely isn’t the same as if it were news, as video sites often all users to embedded their video players into other sites as it is, but the point still stands that these video sites will find that they are not getting the ad revenue they might otherwise get by having people go directly to their site, and as it appears they bandwidth for these videos is still being taken from the originating site through their embedded players, so it would appear that these sites are “losing out” due to this feature. As digg will be using their bandwidth and not giving them near as many click throughs to their site as they would have gotten otherwise without this new feature, which will direclty impact the sites profitability (which I can tell you from experience is a very difficult thing to do with video sites due to the unevolving bandwidth/hosting plans out their, and the difficulty of making them profitable with the unchanged Google model for Advertising that is generally accepted throughout the Internet).
Furthermore the only video site that digg.com has seemed to add to their thumbnail (and now insite digg video player) is metacafe.com. It has been apparent to me that videos are quickly becoming a section that is gaining huge popularity, especially as videos have long been the most dugg submissions on digg, despite my disliking of that. I have no problems with videos, but far too long have they prevented quality news from hitting digg, I’m glad they decided to separate news and videos into separate sections of their own. But back on point, if digg is to allow the video section to further grow like it has, it should have been far more focused on adding more and more video sites integration into their site with thumbnails and embedded video players. They sent back an email to a video site im working on with a partner, and it said over a month ago, that they were now ready to start implementing new video sites thumbnails, but failed to request necessary information, or to further work with sites who have requested to get their video site thumbnails/embedded videos on digg.
They have seemed to add some new pages:
*[digg.com]
*[digg.com] (I don’t know if this is new but it isn’t a page I’ve visited before, it may have just been added or changed from a past method, I have always just emailed digg using the appropriate digg email address in the past)
*haven’t personally found any others, has anyone else seen any new pages added to digg?
Overall the new navigation is better than in digg v3.0 update…but with the removal of more features (just like they did with the switch between digg 2 and 3 with removing features like the ability to choose how many digg stories displayed on a given page in digg upcoming..a feature I liked), and focusing more on changing superficial features on the site, this seems like a rather poor upgrade.
I would have much rather seen something done about the biggest problems on digg….duping, and giving out more tools to the users to prevent abuse by comment and submission spammers…so that we can work toward further improving the site. They also should have added the ability to view who buries stories on digg, just like you can view who dugg stories, because typically buries carry a greater weight than diggs when it comes to a stories promotion, and they need to been seen by the user, just as much as diggs do. I remember numerous times when submissions or comments and such are unfairly buried or mass buried by a digg cabal, or digg bury brigade, which causes digg’s quality of content to deteriorate as it has, in my opinion.
Digg seems to add new features and such periodically…..but with each new feature added, their should be new tools for the mass of users to use to prevent abuse of these features, but that no longer seems to happen…digg seems to be forgetting to give users new moderation tools, and is focused on controlling such things more themselves. Also they should be more concerned with continually changing design and navigation (which is the foundation of any website), rather than worrying about important features, tools, etc changes and additions that are far more important to make.
And what ever happened to the public release of the Digg public API that Kevin Rose himself said was coming multiple times, and should have been release a month or 2 ago I believe according to his numerous statements about it’s release time. And on that note, what ever happened to changing the top users page to list achievements for other diggers work, such as digging quality content up to the homepage (something like giving users credit on top users list, for digging stories in upcoming that make it to the homepage, and showing it as a percent of the stories that they digg, that homepage/become popular on digg’s homepage). Features like that would further encourage diggers to be more diverse in their contributions, motivate further “digging” which seems more and more to be a lost art among diggers, largely due to duping and spamming which clutter up the digg upcoming far more than it has ever been before.
Overall digg’s greatest focus should be on the medium this site has become, and the model they have made for it, rather than the superficial navigation and feature upgrades that they make so often now. I really think their site design and navigation should have been nailed down long ago, as it is holding them back from doing the important work, that they should be focused on (scalability, releasing public API, new user moderation tools, and solving problems like duping through algorithms or web crawlers).
wow…I think this is far longer than my Halo 3 rant. I think maybe I should decide to set up a blog now, rather than create such large comments here, and on digg…maybe that would also encourage me to edit what I type and make a more elegant, journalistic article, rather than making a verbose, unintelligible rant. anywho…my apologies for the horribly long rant….I think I finally create a blog on wordpress and blog about things instead, seeing as this comment is unacceptably long…now that I have a month long winter break to do so. I suppose it is time to head off to my final exam, which I’ll surely bomb now, because of this digg update
/end rant here/ …feel free to remove due to length. when a comment is longer than the post, I think that’s a good sign to start blogging 
Wow Curtiss, you definitely have a lot of insightful things that you pointed out.
I didn’t even notice, but yes, they did remove that feature. It would allow you to see who has marked you as a friend instead of just seeing who your friends are. I’ll surely miss that.
Yeah, I feel a little bad for all of the video sites out there that are going to have their content “embedded” in Digg. Sure they offer that feature but that is going to eat so much bandwidth up that it might start to hurt them.
I really miss being able to choose how many Digg stories appear on a page at a given time as well. It was always nice being able to see 150 stories at one time because now I find myself shuffling through tons of pages and each time you go from one page to another you don’t know if a story had been moved up to the page that you were just at. I have had this happen to me many times when digging through the upcoming stories.
Amen to that!
I think a blog would be a great idea. You have a lot of very insightful opinions that a lot of people would agree with. Shoot me an email when you get it setup so that I can add it to my feed reader!
Yes, I definitely like the new design, it is really very good. It is fresh… That is what I call a perfect modern design.
I love the new design, Podcast feature is great.
This one is short I promise
Saw that their was [jinx.com] today as well at jinx, as I rarely visit the site I figured it had been around for some time, so I didn’t go announcing it or submitting it to Digg or anything, figuring since it wasn’t announced by the Digg Team or anything, that it had been around for a while, until I saw it [digg.com] just a couple hours after I noticed it.
I need a new black hat anyways…so I suppose I’ll get geeky and buy a Digg hat