The New Digg Has Been Finally Rolled Out
Last time when I was writing about Digg I was pretty optimistic about their possible success on international level and I haven’t changed my thoughts about that.
However, today Digg has finally rolled out their new version and old version has became a part of history. This was the first time for me to actually have hands on the new version since I had not much time to test it before.
I have to admit that my first impressions are not so great about the new version, as I have expected already. The new version of Digg is very very similar to Twitter and it is followers-based platform.
I have written about the advantages of such followers-based platform which will bring some great opportunities to Digg to spread its business, however, this is something which is definitely to kill the spirit of Digg we have knew.
Previous version of Digg which had front page system was pretty good and it is little bit questionable why it has been changed at all. The Digg’s front page of the previous version was the place where most of Digg community spent their time, there was some kind of excitement to watch what is going to pop out next. From my short experience with the new version, I could conclude that front page (or Top News) is not going to be so exciting as it was in previous version.
There is also one more thing which is going to be pretty interesting to follow in future of Digg’s community. The top users. We all know that previous version has enabled top users to be well, top users. Some people claim that top users have played significant role in the success of Digg. We are not going to discuss about advantages or disadvantages of the top users system which seems to be almost unavoidable in every social bookmarking service on the internet. There were some pros and some cons of such system. With the new version of Digg, one thing is sure, top users are not going to be top users anymore. Digg has chosen to give advantage to corporate publishers instead of top users and that is what could be the most harmful for Digg’s community. Digg used to be true social media where anyone could raise a voice and eventually point out something interesting to thousands of visitors.
Digg has clearly shown to the top users that their power is going to be significantly decreased by not including an option to follow friends’ submissions. If Digg has only included this option, top users would be able to do what they could do in previous version. Top users were also those who have provided the most of the front page content on Digg.com for years. That community deserves a lot of credits for Digg’s success, however, the new version has left them on the side and gave an advantage to corporate publishers.
I cannot say that I am disappointed because I have expected from new version to be like this. I am little bit worried about that Top News section and how often is it going to be updated. As an average Digg user, I think that I will spend the most of my time in that section looking for interesting stories. I cannot say even that I do not like the new version but I am really going to miss the old one. Digg has to be careful with those changes indeed and with excluding and including some awkward and uncommon options because Digg users got used to have some standard options on Digg and plenty of them will hate any changes. Everyone will need a time to adopt to the new version even if those changes which were made in new platform are not so big.
I am not sure what are the plans of Digg’s staff to do with this platform in future. I have been thinking today that we could actually see a new improved version of Digg in only few weeks or months and I believe that this new version which has been presented today is only a beginning of the wave of changes which could come in future. One is sure, this is going to be interesting 
Tagged as Digg, social bookmarking + Categorized as social media
