4 ms·

Exclusive Video And Screenshots Of Digg Version 4

44 points by daniel_levine 16y ago

ErrantX 16y ago
Hmm, so the idea is basically a mashup of current Digg, plus some ideas from Twitter and Delicious 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.
gkoberger 16y ago
I don't understand the reasoning behind this move. Sure, I get that it's 'cool'- Digg just has Twitter/Facebook/etc envy. 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).
- IanMikutel 16y ago
  1. Digg is still a place for finding crowd sourced news. It simply is recognizing user demand seen across the web for social features and adding that into its product. 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.
  - abossy 16y ago
    Re: 2. Two social sites are clear winners: Facebook and Twitter. Delicious initially had strong adoption, hence they were acquired, but it's been downhill since then. Google Buzz can be considered a failure; Google forced their social graph upon users and they weren't happy. 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.
marcamillion 16y ago
Regardless of what the haters are saying, this looks cool. 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.
abossy 16y ago
If I'm understanding the video correctly, I'll have the same problem that I have with Facebook and Twitter: interesting things are either getting drowned out or not being posted at all. I agree with a few of the other posts; this feels like more of a half-hearted attempt to mimic existing sites, instead of delivering something completely new, the way Digg did in December 2004.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
blehn 16y ago
It's rather telling that they're marketing Digg as a way to get traffic. Yes, it's good for that that, but that's not what it's for. It's (well, used to be) for finding interesting news, articles, links, etc. Getting more people to post their own blogspam probably won't help the site much. And for the actual users, I think it'd be a little disheartening to see Rose trying to appeal to publishers rather than the community.
- nostromo 16y ago
  Well, he does start the video saying this preview is for publishers -- just as Google has done outreach to advertisers -- that's fine. 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.
ojbyrne 16y ago
I hope there's more, because this just looks like minor refinements. Hardly worth the 2 years and umpteen millions of dollars that went into it. "My News" isn't all that different from the existing user profile.
jfarmer 16y ago
I'm going to toot my own horn, here. Almost three years ago to the day I wrote an article outlining what Digg should do in light of the launch of the Facebook Platform: 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/ 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/ 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.
AmericanOP 16y ago
I see the value in forcing users to self-curate since it allows you to disconnect from the chaff, and it's an interesting play to capture the value of interest-based link sharing in theory. However, like TC, I don't even need to say why it will fail.
lzimm 16y ago
fuck, who cares?! hasn't twitter made digg completely irrelevant? (well, i guess all the idiots posting consistently useless bullshit helped too... yay mob voting!) democracy works, unless half the country is texan.

44 points by daniel_levine 16y ago

Hmm, so the idea is basically a mashup of current Digg, plus some ideas from Twitter and Delicious 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.

gkoberger 16y ago

I don't understand the reasoning behind this move. Sure, I get that it's 'cool'- Digg just has Twitter/Facebook/etc envy. 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).

IanMikutel 16y ago
1. Digg is still a place for finding crowd sourced news. It simply is recognizing user demand seen across the web for social features and adding that into its product. 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.
- abossy 16y ago
  Re: 2. Two social sites are clear winners: Facebook and Twitter. Delicious initially had strong adoption, hence they were acquired, but it's been downhill since then. Google Buzz can be considered a failure; Google forced their social graph upon users and they weren't happy. 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.

marcamillion 16y ago

Regardless of what the haters are saying, this looks cool. 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.

abossy 16y ago

If I'm understanding the video correctly, I'll have the same problem that I have with Facebook and Twitter: interesting things are either getting drowned out or not being posted at all. I agree with a few of the other posts; this feels like more of a half-hearted attempt to mimic existing sites, instead of delivering something completely new, the way Digg did in December 2004.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

blehn 16y ago

It's rather telling that they're marketing Digg as a way to get traffic. Yes, it's good for that that, but that's not what it's for. It's (well, used to be) for finding interesting news, articles, links, etc. Getting more people to post their own blogspam probably won't help the site much. And for the actual users, I think it'd be a little disheartening to see Rose trying to appeal to publishers rather than the community.

nostromo 16y ago
Well, he does start the video saying this preview is for publishers -- just as Google has done outreach to advertisers -- that's fine. 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.

ojbyrne 16y ago

I hope there's more, because this just looks like minor refinements. Hardly worth the 2 years and umpteen millions of dollars that went into it. "My News" isn't all that different from the existing user profile.

jfarmer 16y ago

I'm going to toot my own horn, here. Almost three years ago to the day I wrote an article outlining what Digg should do in light of the launch of the Facebook Platform: 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/ 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/ 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.

AmericanOP 16y ago

I see the value in forcing users to self-curate since it allows you to disconnect from the chaff, and it's an interesting play to capture the value of interest-based link sharing in theory. However, like TC, I don't even need to say why it will fail.

lzimm 16y ago

fuck, who cares?! hasn't twitter made digg completely irrelevant? (well, i guess all the idiots posting consistently useless bullshit helped too... yay mob voting!) democracy works, unless half the country is texan.