The new Digg, take advantage of it | Bypeople

The new Digg, take advantage of it

Many of us saw the new Digg came this past week and with almost no advice, took us into its arms. Like myself, there are many diggers that noticed how many of the things they used to enjoy, like the Bury button, the submitted are among others were erased from the face of the Digg land, there are many persons that have shown unhappy about this new Digg changes and that’s been started to be seeing on the social web area.

But come on, let’s not rush, we should give the new Digg an opportunity to expose all of its new features before we turn our backs on it, we are going to make our own contribution with this quick review that will study the main changes among the old and the new Digg as well as the new features and options, like yourselves, we are still discovering the whole potential of Digg and hopefully we can fully explore it in a short notice.

Old Digg vs New Digg, the main differences

OK, there are many things that trace the line that divides the old-school Digg and the new one, let’s take a look at some of the new features and also to those who are not longer reachable.

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No more Upcoming section

According to Digg statistics, less than 2 % of the page views came from this area, and that’s why the developers decided to remove it, in order to let space to some other important elements, such as the My News section, although according to the current Digg staff, this section will be returning soon.

New power diggers

A complete revision around the digging process has been made, looking to celebrate the quality diggers above others. The ranking system will change from picking up the people with the most duggs towards those who make good researches and are always suggesting quality contents.

The classic power diggers used to digg all day long and submit around 2 articles per day, which usually made it to the front page with no problem; on the new Digg that will no longer work, because the page are now more focused on quality browsing, so the power diggers need to adapt a new behavior in order to keep being relevant, it’s now time for they to submit things that they really like instead of posting on the name of 3rd persons.

Your favorites are gone, it’s time for saving

All your previous favorites are gone, and the only way to finding them is manually, from now on, every time you have a story that you wish to keep closer to you, you need to save that stories for further readings. This means also that the submitted button is gone, so you’re not longer able to reach your post articles easily.

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No more bury button

There was many Digg brigades focused specifically on burying contents, themes like technology and science were among the most affected. Digg saw this and now that button is gone, although they left an option, which is the report button. You will not be burying a story with this button but, after many hidings, a report will be sent to the Digg managers and they will take cards on the issue.

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In general terms, the New Digg has taken a step ahead in terms of design and social networking, many bug and fixes are still waiting to be fixed but, these are basically the key differences between the old and new version of Digg.

Starting on the new Digg

OK, if you had an old Digg account, it’s almost sure that the migration process has been completed to this date. If you’re one of those persons the only thing you need to do is start working on the new Digg tools and options. Because they’re currently exploiting all the server’s capacity on the migration of the old accounts, the only way to access to the new Digg is by entering the waiting list or receiving an invitation from a current user of the new Digg.

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Suggested Diggers

As with Twitter, the new Digg has a suggested members section, where you can meet new people with similar interests and start connecting with them. You can browse by category or connecting through your Twitter, Google or Facebook account. Because the list works similar to Twitter’s, there will always be new people to add on the list, hopefully this works well as it has been on the blue bird’s website.

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As in business, we suggest you to add people with similar tastes and stuff, that will help you build a large community with similar topics as a foundation. Along with the regular user suggestions, there will be showing up the “Default Diggers”, which are usually powerful groups or persons that many people will like to add, such as the CNN channel or Barack Obama.

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New Digg’s homepage

Now let’s take a look at the new Digg homepage, there are many changes that you need to understand in order to adapt to this new interface of Digg, we are now going to explain you the functionality of every part of the new homepage.

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You can see above how the new homepage looks like, the design process took the page to a more friendly interface, probably inspired on the Facebook look, blue tones, white fonts and clean areas are now a constant across the page, a thoughtful color palette has been applied to every part of the website, you can notice that the basic color palette is formed by blue, green and yellow, which I personally consider a good selection.

OK, now that we have seen the new look, let’s check the things that are inside that pretty appearance, we need to zoom in so we can explain you the different parts of the revamped version of Digg’s homepage.

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The left side of the homepage will show you the must active diggers among your friends, that will help you find out spammers and lazy people. On the top of that list you will find the direct link to your saved stories, remember that there’s no longer a submissions area.

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Towards the center of the homepage we find the main posts lists, featuring the most relevant duggs of the moment chosen by your friends. Above that list you will see the invitations area.

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The right side of the homepage shows a top news bar featuring only the best news that your friends have submitted or dugg, you can notice the difference from the main news area through the change from yellow Digg buttons to green ones, these news are also not ready to be Digg, you are only seeing a preview that after clicking on it, will took you to the real article.

The main bar

Unlike the old Digg bar, this one has new properties and elements that will make people’s experience a lot easier and nicer, let’s see what this is about.

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My News is the new trend in Digg. You are now allowed to see your submissions and duggs and the ones made by your friend, see this as a personalized Digg homepage that will try to show you only posts that may catch your attention.

The Top News section is a survivor version of the old Digg’s homepage, there you will see all the popular news, regardless of theme or the persons behind the article.

Finally there’s the submission bar, you are not longer obligated to make several clicks until you reach the submit a new link area, with the New Digg, the submissions can be done right from the homepage.

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Ok I guess the screenshot can be a little messy but here comes a clearer explanation. The first two arrows point to your followers and following sections, that’s simple. The next arrow points at your personal menu, where you can access to your main settings, the comes the classic search bar and finally the one that’s paying for all of this, I’m talking of course about the publicity banner.

Settings menu

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By clicking on any of this buttons, you will be redirected to the man settings window, where you can adjust several things about your Digg account.

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On the profile section, you can edit your profile image, your public name, location, description, date of birth and gender. Try to write a proper text on the “About Yourself” section, people won’t care if you like Rihanna or 30 Seconds to Mars, so don’t waste text lines on that, because that’s what Facebook is for, try instead to write a serious text that informs people about your working skills and expectations.

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This is the basic account area, where you can define your email address and password.

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On Notifications you can check if you want either receive email notifications or not about new followers and Digg news.

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This is very important, as you can see we use it ourselves. Importing your RSS links to Digg will increase your productivity by allowing Digg to auto-submit your latest posts. In order to import the feed, you need to place a key code inside your RSS body or your latest article and let Digg verify it. Coming up we are going to see the problem that the RSS has presented to the Digg community.

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On the Viewing section, you will find the necessary tools to customize your Digg according to your preferences, so you can see it exactly the way you like.

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Links are always useful to promote your blogs and accounts in other social networks, by the way, you should check our new Webdesignshock group at DeviantArt.

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And finally connections, which is the place where you can start crossing your Digg account with other social websites such as Google, Twitter and Facebook.

Similarities with Twitter and Facebook

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There are many people saying that with its revamping, Digg has become the “News Twitter”, with better diagramming and more attractive design. You subscribe to profiles that you like and you will have a customized homepage showing you only posts that you probably be interested into.

We can make a parallel between retweets and diggs, retweets allow you to share contents that you like, while diggs can work as voting robots of themes that you also like with the chance of commenting about the post. Several diggs can move a post into the Popular Section, while an extended retweet can turn it into a trading theme.

The similarity with Facebook relies mostly on the design. You can notice a large presence of blue and white fonts in both sites. Things such as following profiles and leaving contents and messages are also elements that Digg and Facebook have in common.

The good and the bad about new Digg

We have completed our study around the new Digg functions and properties, sure you will find some other stuff that we haven’t noticed yet, we will really appreciate if you let us know about them. Hopefully we can now work in a more effective way with the new Digg without having to visit the FAQ section once in a while.

For the final part of this article, let’s talk a little about the good and bad things of this revamped version of Digg, these topics are based on our personal opinion, so feel free to leave us your comments if you agree or disagree with any of our statements regarding this subject.

The Good

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OK, this new Digg has for sure many nice stuff, like the improved auto-submit option of your RSS, that’s an excellent option for those who are to busy publishing on their blogs and have no time to spend on Digg. The new submission bar is amazing, because you usually wasted a lot of time on the old Digg finding the submission area and filling a bunch of fields and stuff, I’m sure that with this improvement the amount of submissions will be increased.

My News is a nice way to individualize Digg, people were tired of applying filters in order to find the information they were looking for; with My News, valuable information will be easier and faster to reach, allowing a better quality on the diggings around the website. The developers knew that it may be people who weren’t happy with this change and so, they decided to keep an additional window called Top News, were diggers can still find all the popular news, regardless of topic.

With the new active users bar, you will be able to manage in a more effective way your contacts and see how is really into Digg and how is not, similar to when you stop seeing tweets from somebody on Twitter. The customer service is another good point of Digg, I’m not sure about the previous Digg support but on the new one I received quick assistance regarding a submission issue.

The settings area is more organized, people have now a nicer menu to organize their settings and account properties, another check point for the new Digg. In general terms, the new Digg offers more interactivity, better shortcuts, an improved interface and a deeper level of customization.

The Bad

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But because nothing is perfect, the new version of Digg has many problems that need to be checked by the developing team and that has been causing the reaction of many annoyed diggers.

One of the things that people are missing is the upcoming section, that area was useful for finding the most recent news and articles in order to be informed of the latest events. The Digg team have said that the upcoming section will be returning soon, hopefully it does.

Another issue is the submitting process, during this morning we were trying to submit the latest article from Webdesignshock and it was not possible through the submission bar at the homepage. First a message saying that the URL was incorrect kept popping up several times until I decided to reboot my PC. Then a message saying that I need to slow down appeared and that really annoyed me, that’s when I decided to contact the customer service, the guys answered me quick but they did not solved the problem for me. Finally I realize that the only way to make things work was to importing Webdesignshock’s RSS into Digg in order to automate the process, as soon as I did that, the article was submitted.

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There’s another problem regarding the RSS feeders, as many of you have probably seen, Reddit, another social network, has taken control over many of the popular diggs on the past few days. The Reddit phenomenon is happening due to the random nature of Reddit’s community, it’s now quite easy to jump the entire homepage as all articles are submitted regardless of how good, bad or indifferent they are. This is not only happening with Reddit but with some other sites, the guys of Digg need urgently pay attention to this.

I’m trying to be fair on this point, but I cannot be soft because there are brilliant minds behind the Digg’s success, hopefully they read this article and start working on improve the site, because personally, I’m a huge fan of the Digg experience.

The connectivity with other social networks is a dangerous tool, because it’s true that Digg will now be more connected with the social world but, many of the news that people will be reading on Twitter and Facebook will be then featured on Digg, losing it’s originality and unique style.

So, what should we expect with new Digg?

Digg started as a social news website that worked thanks to its community, which was the responsible of voting or burying the different contents that were posted, leaving only the most attractive and top quality articles make it to the front page.

Founded in 2004 by Kevin Rose and his mates, the original website was advertise-free but, with the increasing popularity of the site, the paid publicity became a part of Digg, the also added Google Add-sense into the web page. By July 2005, the 2.0 version of Digg was released, featuring the new friend list and an improved digging process. The updating process was maintained and in 2006, the 3.0 version saw the light, this became the most famous version of Digg and it was under this update that the website became mainstream. The 3.0 version incorporated new browsing categories and a browse-all section were all the categories were merged.

The popularity of Digg resulted on the so-called “Digg effect”, which was the series of cases when a Dugg website reported a huge increase on its traffic due to the presence of the site inside the Digg area. Digg witnessed a couple of years surrounded of success but, when Facebook and Twitter began to rise, the Digg developers knew that it was time for some changes.

2010 was the year chosen for the release of Digg 4.0, or new Digg as we are calling it on this article, we have already studied all the improvements and changes that have occurred inside the page and it’s now time to analyze the future of Digg on the upcoming times.

With the new Digg, the browsing speed has been increased, leaving time to the diggers to focus on submit and vote quality contents / news. A higher level of customization has been also executed, which leads us to the question, “Is Digg trying to compete with Facebook and Twitter?, or is trying to make a quiet join to the two power websites of the 2.0 era?”. Whatever is the case, we can expect several changes coming up on Digg, perhaps some things that were dismissed from the 3.0 version will be coming back and new great tools will see the light.

No matter what happens, with the release of its revamped version, Digg has ensured an extended period of time on the world wide web. We suggest you to take full advantage of its new contents, look for new quality sources, make new friends and enjoy the digging experience, it’s probably that in a few years, a new website will took command over the internet but for now, probably it’s still on its beta phase, waiting for you to discover it. Meanwhile, Digg is still a nice choice for all the web fans.

By the way, don’t forget to visit us at our Digg, Twitter and StumbleUpon accounts to find more great contents and resources, if you like what you see, feel free to add us as your friend.



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