Digg recently released a new version of it’s site. Users are immediately asked upon sign in to import Facebook, Twitter, and Google friends. We’ve got 25,000+ Twitter followers at AudioMicro and Digg keeps throwing a this 404 error. The site’s homepage presently can’t be accessed. I’m sure they’ll get it up and running soon, but for the time being it looks like the migration has not gone as smoothly as planned.
The tech pundits are writing about how bad the new Digg is and how it’s the end for Digg’s power users. After spending 5 minutes on the site, I think that they are DEAD WRONG. Digg power users will still control the site because all of their followers have been migrated over and the new default homepage for logged in users is the “My News” Feed, which the power users will certainly still control for the majority of folks on Digg, as these are the accounts with the most followers. Therefore, when the power users Digg something, it will still show up in the feeds of a great number of Digg users to be dugg up and these stories will ultimately make their way to the “Top News” page as in the past. The smartest move Digg made in this migration, though, was to the keep the Digg homepage, for non-logged in users, as a stream of the “Top News” stories. Here’s why…
The power users who control Digg will digg a story and have it show in the “My News” feed all of their followers. Once their followers Digg, the stories will begin to appear in the “Top News” stream, which is the default homepage for any non-logged in user. The non-logged in users are the ones who visit the Digg homepage and actually click through to the articles, rather than the power users and their followers. Most the traffic that Digg actually sends to external sites comes from casual homepage browsers who actually click on links. Because there is little to no change for these folks (aka the “lurkers”), the redesign will not hurt Digg in any way. The only way that Digg could have hurt itself with the redesign would have been to change it’s homepage for non-logged in users (e.g. to something like that of Facebook – i.e. an informational welcome / parking page). Because they didn’t go this route and kept the homepage for non-logged in users as the “Top News” tab, I think the redesign will have no negative effect on Digg. Will the changes have a positive effect? We’ll have to wait and see.
Related articles:
- New digg sucks . Complete Review on features of new digg | BLOG404 (blog404.com)
- Is Digg digging itself into a hole with its new design? (econsultancy.com)
- Digg 4 Goes Live-ish to the Public (readwriteweb.com)
