• Home
  • News

New Digg v1 Design Interface Sucks. It’s Experiment Went Wrong [Review]

It’s good to change but not all changes are good. Digg v1 new design by Betaworks completely changed the way it worked as a Social Bookmarking site. Not just the way it looks but the way users interacted and algorithm of Voting has completely changed now. Old users may probably react in word saying – it sucks!

Here’s how new Digg interface looks.

 

Digg v1 Design rethink

1. User Profile Deleted without Warning

No matter how old your Digg account was, how great your profile was built, everything was deleted overnight. User accounts no more exists with New Digg v1 and to your surprise there is no official word about getting it back.

Facebook Login is the only way. You need to have Facebook account in order to sign in and that’s mandatory. Your basic info including, name, Picture, Gender, List of Friends, etc will be exposed to Digg by authorizing Facebook to sign in.

No More anonymity. When Facebook is the only way, you cannot be anonymous anymore. This kills the freedom of commenting for which Reddit is liked and loved.

Sorry, I forgot to mention that you CANNOT COMMENT. Yes, at least as of now on v1 design, it is not possible to comment your views on any story. Not sure whether it will be implemented in future upgrades.

2. Digg Archives Deleted

Along with the user data, all those old archives are deleted. Digg had around 14 million pages indexed in Google and now they are all 404 (Not Found). These includes archives and user profiles as I mentioned above.

3. Submitted Stories are No Where?

This is another change. Just enter the permalink URL and click Submit. There is no provision to mention Category or Thumbnail or anything. Also, when you submit, what you get is a Thanks!

New Digg v1 Submit Link

Nothing is mentioned about the link of your story or where it would appear (Just in case you want to confirm). I checked the upcoming section for new stories but it was no where.

It should be noted that the Digg buttons on website to submit no more works (doesn’t fill the URL automatically). It just takes you to the Submit Link page.

4. Digging doesn’t mean Voting up

Remember when we used to Digg a story, it was counted as upvote. This was a criteria for a story to make it to the top; more the votes, more chances of reaching top.

Digg Vote Algorithm inlcudes Tweets and Facebook

It isn’t same thing anymore. New Digg tagline says- “What the Internet is Talking about Right now“. And the word “Internet” there means Twitter and Facebook. To make a story to the top, number of Facebook Likes and Retweets are taken into consideration and then Digg votes.

5. What’s Good (but still not so good)

Homepage looks clean and easy to read. Bigger images also catches the readers eye towards story.

But then doesn’t it make Digg just another Content site or Homepage with Headline and Description?

Using Facebook to sign in will certainly reduce number of spam.

But it is a harsh measure and Folks are really not liking the restriction of Facebook sign-in.

What’s the Main Problem with Digg

Real problem is Digg failed to build a supporting community like Reddit does. Users were always fragmented and this rethinking made it just another News aggregator. It may attract new users, but it’s not going to get back former diggers back and doubt if existing users will even prefer to stay.

Digg underwent number of relaunches and design changes but this was the most pathetic after being taken over by Betajerks, Betaworks I mean.

I am no pessimist but I am really disappointed by this change and this article was my rant and the way to spit it out. I really don’t want to see Digg dying. I believe All great Changes are preceded by chaos and hope Digg is changing for its own good.

Click Here to Leave a Comment Below 8 comments
Sujay Ghosh - August 3, 2012

Rohit, you are right… I was thoroughly surprised after seeing that yesterday. What they did is really the worst.
P.S: If you haven’t notice, some changes were also being made with Stumbleupon. The browser bookmark button of stumbleupon is not working. It will bring you to other stumbled site (add this button is working)

Reply
    Vivek Bandebuche - August 3, 2012

    yeh same problem here with stumbleupon here………anyways…thats not a big issue bro…..

    Reply
      Sujay Ghosh - August 3, 2012

      Yup not a big issue and I wouldn’t probably have noticed that, since I do not use bookmark button. But the day before yesterday even the add-this button was also not working which led me to test the bookmark. Anyway the add-this sharing now is working but not the bookmark.
      If I’ve not wrongly noticed, these changes are being done to combat for large amount of spam. But deleting all the posts is surely the worst solution.

      Reply
Sushil kumar - August 4, 2012

If 14M pages are “Not found” then it will effect on PR or not??

Reply
    Rohit Langde - August 4, 2012

    Not sure but its a big risk.

    Reply
y2b4u3d - August 4, 2012

I hope someone submit this article to digg 😐

Reply
    Rohit Langde - August 5, 2012

    Hahha, I already did but it couldn’t make it to the top. Manual Moderation you see.

    Reply
Isaac - September 6, 2012

i thought i was the only one who think it sucks, you cant even see your link history anymore, you cant see if your link is promoted or not. i hate the new look but i have to keep on posting to enjoy the traffic.

Reply

Leave a Reply: