Digg was established in 2004 and by 2008 it was evaluated at $160 million. It had become the front page of the internet where every user could find new and interesting information related to a variety of topics. Further, users could vote a story up or down or in Digg terms “digg it” or “bury it”. Stories which were digged by multiple users became popular and hence, became more visible to other users. A community had been developed over time which interacted well, making the internet news website a plethora of information.
After 2008, the innovation at Digg came to a stand still. The huge amount of traffic that Digg received soon attracted spammers from all over who used malpractices to redirect traffic to their website or made other users click on affiliate links. Though Digg did the occasional account suspension for obvious infractions, it wasn't able to fight spam the way it should have. Soon, there were more users or profiles that were only taking advantage of digg without adding any value to the community, than there were actual users who frequented Digg for what it promised.
The new version, known as Digg v1 is a lot different from the old version. Here's how:
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Lack of community involvement: In order to start afresh Digg scrapped all the old profiles which were active since its establishment. Users who had gained many followers over the years were not happy with this decision. The new version simply allows you to register, but there is no concept of followers or following. It is nearly mandatory for an internet news website to have an active community but then it is possible that Digg is trying to transform its image into something different.
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Comments section no more: Another popular feature of Digg was the comment section on stories. Though, the section was the favorite place for spammers to place their links in order to obtain traffic, it was also a place where valued discussions were held.
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Categories disappeared: The old version allowed users to view stories according to topics like technology, politics, entertainment, etc. whereas in the new version, stories aren't submitted to different categories hence users can't view stories from a particular category anymore.
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Tweets: The new version has added tweets that describe or link to a popular story. The tweets are chosen on the basis of popularity based on retweets by the twitter audience. Since twitter is the most popular place for interaction on the internet today, a unique twitter integration like this one is surely a great idea.
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Design & Development: The popular blue theme of the site has changed to a completely white one and so has the logo which is now black in color on a white background. The new version also seems lighter with faster loading and better click response. The software development company which has developed the database software has also done a great job.
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Insights: An interesting new feature introduced in the new version is the graphical display of traffic on a particular story. The graph is an eighteen hour graphical representation of the amount of visitors viewing the link from anywhere on the internet.
Senior officials have also stated that the company wants to recreate Digg as a brand new start-up. It will be interesting to see how well Digg uses social media as a marketing tool to come up from the ashes it had once become a part of.