Over the weekend, social news site Digg changed how its links work in a way that gives the site an increase in the number of users who visit.
Users of the site's URL-shortening service noticed that if the Web address they had shortened had been submitted to Digg, the shortened URL would then take its visitors to the story's page on Digg instead of the page it linked to. At least it was this way for users who were not logged into Digg; registered users who had turned off the DiggBar (and who had a recent log-in cookie from Digg) would not see the change in behavior.
The problem
This may seem like a small change, but it's a big knock on Digg's shortening service, and for Digg's credibility at maintaining features.
Introduced in early April, the DiggBar was originally intended as a service that did three things: one was to shorten links and act as a redirection tool. The second was to bring Digg features along for the ride with a framed bar that would appear on the top of the page and provide a simple way to view user comments, related stories, as well as other Dugg items from that same site. The third was to provide a simpler way for users to publish content, either to Digg itself, or places like Facebook, Twitter, and e-mail. This included giving users the capability to shorten a URL by dropping a Digg.com/ in front of the site's address.
Despite the bevvy of features compared to some competing URL-shortening services, both users and publishers alike found fault in the DiggBar. Users had problems with the service since it drastically hid information about the site they were on, including the URL in their browser's address bar, and any bookmarks they saved, which would retain the DiggBar. For publishers, there was the worry that users would choose to comment back on Digg instead of on their own pages, as well as SEO damage from search engines not properly indexing and attributing traffic since Digg.com was the redirector.
Digg's solution, which came just two weeks after the DiggBar launch, was to make the whole DiggBar experience something users had to opt-in to see. This meant that registered users of the site would only see shortened Digg URLs, and the DiggBar by choice. Stray visitors of Digg wouldn't see either.
A feature that was once quite controversial, the DiggBar is now a rarity, unless users are registered with Digg and have opted-in to see it on Digg story links.
(Credit: CNET)In effect this left the DiggBar as something power users could take advantage of, but that casual users would never see--reducing the entire DiggBar feature down to URL shortening.
This clearly wasn't good enough for Digg, since this move nets the site more ad impressions and unique user tracks than it would by acting as a redirection service alone. Back when it was originally introduced, the company was able to get by since the DiggBar displayed ads when people were using certain features such as viewing related content, Digg user comments, and other stories from that site's particular source. But, without the DiggBar on top, and without any kind of recognition--other than in name, Digg was getting none of these benefits.
So is Digg's shortening service now just a way to shorten links to Digg.com pages? Digg founder Kevin Rose went on to say as much in a Sunday night appearance on Leo Laporte's This Week in Tech, citing that the company was having to internally juggle certain shortened-URLs that had become popular from outside sources. Particularly, ones from Twitter where the source site would be on the receiving end of an increasing amount of traffic, but because of the lack of a Digg frame bar on the top of the page, it wasn't easy for users to... Read more
Sub DiggerPlus is a new tool that lets you more easily view sites your friends have submitted to Digg.com. To use it you just drop in your Digg username and it lists all of the stories your friends have submitted in chronological order over the past 24 hours. You can then sort by topic, submitter, and the number of Diggs each story has. The real fun of the service though, is a feature that lets you hop to each site with back and forth buttons, emulating the feeling of navigating an old Web ring.
Compared to Digg's own friends tool which links to each story's Digg page, the navigation bar on Sub DiggerPlus makes the process of visiting each site they've submitted quite a bit easier since you hop to the site and not the Digg page that links to it. You may be missing out on some of the Digg flavor, like user comments and critiques, but for new submissions that's not so important since you're likely to be one of the first people to see it.
Sub DiggerPlus shows you the latest submitted stories from your friends on Digg and lets you browse through them quickly. It also keeps track of read and unread stories.
(Credit: CNET)What is important, and what this app does a great job at highlighting is the content itself. If you think a story is cool, you can hop back to Digg to vote it up. If not, you just click the Next button and you're on your way to something new. It's also smart enough to keep track of what you've read and what you haven't, as well as getting rid of any stories after they fall outside of the nebulous 24 hour period where they can make it to the front page after being submitted.
The tool is missing a few features that the Digg API will eventually be able to allow including the capability to Digg up or bury stories. For now you have to do that back on Digg itself, which can be a pain. It also gets rid of the source URL in your browser's address bar, which means you have to grab it from the navigation bar that floats on the bottom of the screen. This isn't terrible behavior, but for some users it may be a little confusing.
Otherwise, if you're a Digg power user, this is a fantastic tool for streamlining your story browsing workflow. When it eventually includes the capability to vote on stories without leaving the navigation, I think it will be a real keeper.
The Sub Digger Plus interface lets you hop between submitted pages, and jump back to your reading list. It also keeps track of what you have and haven't read.
(Credit: CNET)
In response to a wash of negative user and media feedback, Digg is making a few key changes to the DiggBar, the company's URL shortening and Web page-framing service.
Within the next week Digg is turning off the DiggBar for all of its unregistered users, who will be sent directly to each site's main page without the DiggBar or a shortened link--just like it was before the DiggBar even existed. Additionally, for those who are registered with Digg, there will be an option to turn it back on or off on a permanent basis.
Despite the backlash, Digg's vice president of engineering continues to push that the DiggBar's done good things for both Digg and the sites it's linking to. In a company blog post on the upcoming changes, he notes that "roughly 45 percent of all Digging activity is now happening on the DiggBar," which means users are placing their votes off Digg's main site. Quinn also notes that a quarter of the users are using the DiggBar's related stories feature (which also appears on Digg's main site) along with a 10 percent increase in the number of shared, shortened DiggURLs.
Quinn also said that some of the things Digg has learned from the DiggBar will be put to use in the company's browser extensions, which means we could see the random Digg story link, and the number of page views a story has received inside of Digg's Firefox Toolbar.
Digg.com has just launched a brand new feature called the DiggBar, which as mentioned in a previous post, lets users make use of Digg's voting and community while viewing a source article via a Digg URL. According to a post on the official Digg blog, users will also soon be able to create their own shortened URLs right through Digg and third-party microblogging services like Twhirl.
What's neat about the DiggBar is that it accomplishes most of what traditional software toolbars are able to do. You can see and interact with user comments, view related stories, and see other stories that were dugg from the same news source. All the while, the user experience follows you and lets you hop back to Digg. This is also good for publishers because it keeps users on their site while they're doing these activities, which previously would have taken place back at Digg.com.
It also lets everyone in on how much traffic Digg is driving by showing how many views a story has gotten, which in most cases surpasses the number of diggs the story got. This was information that previously only Digg and the publishers were privy to.
The new "DiggBar" comes with you from site to site.
(Credit: CNET)Where Digg may get some heat for the DiggBar is with its inclusion of a "random" button that takes users to a random story on Digg. StumbleUpon, which pioneered this concept, has had the same thing for years, and more recently as part of its own software-free pervasive toolbar. Will Digg fans get on the company about this? Probably not, but it's worth noting that hopping to a random story has never been something you could do from Digg's own site, and as of now is only available on the DiggBar.
Two things that appear to be missing from today's release--and have been long promised, are support for Facebook Connect log-ins, and an improved search tool. Digg was announced as a Facebook Connect launch partner back in July of last year, and it's still not a part of the site. Jay Adelson has recently gone on the record with Wired and on his own Facebook page about an updated version of Digg's site search.
Here's Digg's demo of how it works:
DiggBar from Kevin Rose on Vimeo.
Update: This should now be live for all users. It looks like the shortened links were only showing up for a small portion before getting pushed out to everyone at around 4:30 PST. Also, to make a DiggURL link out of any site you can simply put a "Digg.com/" before any URL and it will be shortened for you. There's also a bookmarklet, which can be found on Digg's explanatory page.
This week social-news site Digg is launching a new way for users to find new stories by adding a recommendation engine that will suggest things for users to read in the upcoming story section based on past site usage. It will take into account what other people similar to yourself are digging on the site and add a special note that shows how many stories you and that person share in common.
The move is two-fold: One part is to expand the social network that has been Digg since the launch of its expanded profile system back in September. The other is to give upcoming stories a little more attention. Stories submitted to Digg can reach the site's front page a number of ways, either by being linked up to highly trafficked external sites, or simply by natural selection in Digg's upcoming queue. The updated recommendation engine will simply be a new way for those stories to get more eyeballs on them given that the number of submitted stories averages around 16,000 a day, according to founder Kevin Rose.
The new feature is only being rolled out to a random number of registered Digg users and is expected to make its way to everyone else in the months to come. In the meantime, you can get some suggestions for stories you might like based on your previous "digging" habits using a third-party service called DiggSuggest. It doesn't use the same algorithm, or do it passively and onsite like Digg's does, but it comes with some pretty interesting results.
You can see the new feature in action in the explanatory video below. After the break, there's also a video with Digg's chief scientist Anton Kast explaining in detail how the new system works.
Digg Recommendation Engine from Kevin Rose on Vimeo.
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