Digg, the user-powered social news website, has released its new version – Digg 4. If you are not familiar with exactly what Digg is, here’s the long and short of it. Created in 2004 Digg allows users to post links to stories they find interesting to share with other members of the site. Whenever other users view these links they have the option to vote on whether they like it or not – choosing between “digging” or “burying” the story.
With version 4 all major social network are integrated into the site allowing users to find new people to follow on Digg by searching through their contacts on sites like Twitter, Google and Facebook. Another new feature is what they call My News. With this feature, users can personalize the news stories they want to see on their homepage by displaying the most recent news based on what’s buzzing in their social circle. Of course, this won’t be for everyone and those that don’t wish to use My News can stick with the traditional homepage that shows stories from around the world.
All these features should have Digg fans high-fiving around the world, however there were a few glitches that had some users wishing to “bury” version 4. With the influx of new traffic it is causing the site to run slower than usual which is one of the main problems Diggers are having with the upgraded site. Even though a lot of users do belong to one or more social networks, not everyone does – believe it or not – and some of Digg’s most die-hard fans have stopped using the site all together because of this integration.
As with most new upgrades, Digg 4 is just getting its footing and is actively working on any problems so that their vision of a new, more social interface will come to fruition completely; and hopefully with minimal user loss and maximum new user gain.
