Digg looks to Twitter and Facebook with update

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By Nicole Kobie

Posted on 26 Aug 2010 at 10:42

A revamp at Digg has taken the news-sharing site further down the social-networking path with functions similar to Twitter and Facebook.

Version 4 of Digg has officially gone live, and aside from a one-step submission process and faster page load times, it now features more social-networking tools including the ability to link profiles to Twitter, Facebook and Google.

One major change is the ability to follow specific publishers. Previously, the site focused on letting users discover content to share, submitting it themselves and letting the community decide if it was worth displaying on the main page.

The new version lets "large and small publishers, and tastemakers" automatically Digg content, with users choosing to see all of it by hitting a Twitter-like follow button.

Digg now features a user-specific news page - which looks like a mix of Twitter and Facebook - showing diggs, story comments and submissions made by friends and those you follow. "This gives you a quick snapshot into the most popular stories your friends and publishers are digging," said founder Kevin Rose in post on the Digg blog.

To see the "global Zeitgeist" of what the community is digging - not only your friends - there's still a "Top News" tab.

Aside from complaints about bugs across the site, some users have expressed dismay at the redesign. "It's just a news tool now, not a community," said quirkopatra. "I'll probably leave."

Rose said the new Digg was just the beginning. "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," he said. "We'll be pushing out features on a regular basis and tweaking often."