The new Digg design launched earlier this week, and as an avid Digg fan, I was excited to see the new changes. The old Digg worked fine and had a nice mix of content from various genres such as business, offbeat, sports, politics and my favorite, technology. There were a lot of features the site had that I didn’t really care for either such as following “friends”, and I didn’t like the darn pop-up window that asked me to share the story I just dug on my FaceBook or Twitter pages. I like reading about Kevin Rose and really admire the guy for standing up to those that threatened to change his company vision. I am not sure what happened this redesign, but it strikes me as a huge mistake.
Tonight when I went to Digg.com, I immediately noticed that Mashable was promoted to the front page a total of ten times, and that was without scrolling down and hitting the load more button (which I am sure would reveal more Mashable links). Now, I am not an expert of Digg, and I did read Kevin Roses blog which outlines the new changes to Digg, but I just can’t get past why Mashable is up the front page so many times now where before they were only up there a few times a day (if you know why, I would love to hear it in the comments below).
If I wanted to see Mashable all the time, I would add their Google Extension to my Chrome browser, or plugged their RSS feed into my reader. I also have FaceBook and Twitter accounts and get notified of stories that my friends are currently reading and would like to share with me. Listen, Digg is not a replacement for Twitter or FaceBook, it’s not an RSS feed placed into a webpage and it’s certainly not the Mashable headquarters (that would be Mashable.com). What Digg is to me is a potpourri of mixed stories that have a certain uniqueness and specialness to them worthy of getting my vote. A collection of the best, if you will. It’s apparent to me that the company has lots it’s soul, and there is no amount of redesigns that are going to fix that. Time for Kevin Rose to go back to his roots and create something truly unique with Digg, step out of the “me-to” line and beat to a new drum. Save Digg my man!
I posted a video recording my computer screen, you will likely have to make it full screen and up the HD resolution to see it clearly.
Update: I just read this article at ReadWriteWeb, and it sounds like Digg users are pretty upset with the new Digg as well. This quote from the article hits the nail on the head: “This caused many long-time Digg users to accuse the site of “becoming too much like Facebook and Twitter.”This caused many long-time Digg users to accuse the site of “becoming too much like Facebook and Twitter.”
Update: After further investigation, it looks like Mashable is using the Digg company feed that automatically submits all Mashable stories to Digg. You can tell by looking at the story on Digg and seeing who submitted it (in this case Mashable). My guess is that Mashable fans are then Digging it up.
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