After writing my piece on why the new Digg just isn’t what it used to be, I already started listening to community feedback regarding the social network that I thought was worth sharing. Since the Digg submission of my story was already buried, I sincerely hope that Digg listens to what their community members have to say.
- By trying to make Digg more social, it really became less social. (Michael via Twitter)
- [Today is] the day that Digg died. (Lyndon)
- I also can’t see if I have Dugg a story until I open it. (webcure)
- I don’t like that I have to click 2 times to see an article. (webcure)
- If friends are deemphasized, why does the algorithm still continue to penalize the “top submitters?”
- WTF, you can only go back 3 pages of friends submissions now? (Alex)
- It’s ironic that Kevin Rose said that he likes to “build things you click on.” Is that why we have to click twice?
- Talk about memory leaks in Firefox now that I have to open more windows. If this is a way to thwart blind digging, it’s not working.
- What happened to a simple news site? Did Pownce do so badly that Kevin and crew had to merge Digg and Pownce into Digg?
- All of the usability issues and obvious screw ups are killing me. As Tamar pointed out, it’s a social news site, not a network and I could care less about how often profiles are updated. I want to see a description of the article, I want to be able to digg the article or comment immediately and then I want to get out of there, because I’m busy! Hopefully they take the feedback to heart. I’d love to know if they did testing and found that this new approach was really worth it. (Rhea Drysdale via Sphinn)
- The Digg front page is already being impacted. It seems stale and slow-moving. (Adam)
- Ugh! I haven’t fully looked through the changes, but the major thing I noticed is the inability to see the description of the article. It’s going to be a pain in the butt to deal with. (Linda via Pownce)
- I just signed in a took a peek. No descriptions on friends submitted. What is the point? They trying to drive us away from our friends list? digg only works right if you back out of your profile. All this stuff you can do with your friends now…except browse their submitted stories in a normal fashion?? wth? (Kelly via Pownce)
- i am sick and tired of �social networks� and i really don�t want messages and friend lists and about me stuff. i like digg because it�s different and i hope that difference doesn�t erode with these new features. i�m going to block any of you sending me �digg this article� messages. (canwediggit)
- The internet doesn’t need another MySpace, Facebook, Hi5, Orkut, Multiply, etc. social networking site. There are already too many. What I like about Digg is that news and networking were kept separate, now… I just don’t know. (FyreGoddess)
- Diggbookspace coming soon. (supernova17)
- Seriously wtf….this sounds like mission creep. Digg 3.0 was the best…anyone else remember the good old days? (EllisAshbrook)
- I am more convinced that Kevin is responding to pressure from investors to take his huge digg numbers and stats and take on Facebook. This was a rushed redesign job. (Barbara via Pownce)
- They probably took out the descriptions to look more like reddit or delicious… it makes sense when you are going thru your own stuff, like my diggs and submissions, but it should be an option in the profile to bring it back I think that by hiding the “digg it” link they are trying to discourage “blind” diggs (digging w/o reading the actual article), but I dont think is a very good way to do it. And the shouts… well, at least now I dont have to use pownce or twitter to spam my friends for diggs 😉 (Miguel via Pownce)
- Unfortunately, it seems they are encouraging submission spamming the way friends submitted is set up now. I hate that thought. The site will get lame real fast if you have to shout at your friends to get diggs. (Kelly via Pownce)
- It’s not a positive change to remove story descriptions from your friends activity list. I’m really having a hard time conjuring up a logical reason for it. I honestly can’t think of any. Unfortunately, I am NOT going to click on every single one of my friends submissions just to read each and every description that I previously was able to skim over the course of a few pages. I’m sorry but that’s WAY too many clicks for a digger with over 320 friends. This will result in me digging A LOT less, and inadvertently skipping stories that may have otherwise caught my interest. I’d advise the digg UI team to reconsider this one. (decepicrat)
- Digg just wanted to be able to brag about page views for a buyout. If this is a community run site, and majority of the community dislikes it, the site should do what makes the community happy. Digg adding all this functionality will attract that “MySpace, want to be cool on the internet crowd.” Which generates lots of ad clicks because most of them are easily tricked… naw, they are retarded. Good move for Kevin Rose, unless there is some kind of change traffic/user wise. (pictureDIGGER)
- The new Digg can kiss my ass. Why can you read everything on upcoming and homepage but not on your profile? (Jihan)
Digg users quoted by Mashable react similarly.
By the way, did anyone realize that the “sort by most Diggs” option doesn’t quite do that anymore?
For more splendid comments, please see the comments to my other Digg post, the Digg submission of that post, or add your feedback below. Of course, I’d love to hear some positive reaction. Is there any? 🙂
HAHA my qoute is awesome =)
“Your session has expired, please refresh the page before…” – what? I just opened the page, are you kidding me? Gah! I will say that I enjoy the fan feature. Now I know who my stalkers are and vice versa.
haha, right after I submitted that comment I ran into an unknown fatal error on Digg. Sigh… it’s just not getting better. =)
I got the same thing, sadly.
I’m not thrilled about many of the changes, but it will probably make things fairer and more accessable for casual users.
I don’t mind the friends feature. I despise having less access to news than I’m used to.
@Brett: Quite possibly, yes. But the question is – how are casual users’ stories going to be accessed? Through upcoming? I think that’s the only way to do it now without the unnecessary extra click.
The nice, clean, simple days of digg are officially over.
There’s is a “friending fetish” going on at digg right now. I have to admit that I am a part of it ‘cuz I’m not sure how this is going to shake out in the end.
It’s all so complicated now. I want to be able to digg news faster instead of clicking clicking clicking clicking clicking clicking clicking clicking, etc. My poor browser is slow enough 🙁
I share the majority’s oppinion, digg is bigg and ugly.People have to realize that simple is better.
They took the words out of my mouth … all of you who commented and all those quoted in the story above … :/
Tamar,
I agree with Brett on this one. Casual users should have a place on Digg too – the site would not function on the level that it does if it were power users alone. Yes, casual users could still get noticed on upcoming + friends + sharing.
Also, I certainly can appreciate the position that many are taking on this thread. Folks that spent considerable time on Digg prior to the update, by and large, were looking for a social news site. If they wanted social networking, they had their options: Facebook, Myspace, Friendster, etc.
There is such a concept, however, that social news people have a single preferred medium (let’s say Reddit, Propeller/Netscape, Digg, SU, Newsvine, Sphinn, etc). The amount of sheer time that you need to spend finding quality content and staying active in a social news community is huge. So if they are huge in one and casual in another, what’s wrong with that? I mean, how much time do we all spend in a day updating what we’re doing in Facebook, Twitter, etc – and then in the social news…
Here are the next steps for Digg! chat!
Brian, it’s no longer “social news,” though. It’s a social site with news secondary. The point for many of us is that we are here for the news, not for the friends. Sure, keep the friends features there, but don’t remove our ability to read news from our friends!
Here’s the thing: if I want to network with friends for the sheer fact of networking, I have Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Pownce, Friendster (yes, still), and Yahoo! Mash. But Digg has distinctively been different in the respect that I am networking with friends for one primary purpose: to share news with like-minded individuals. That ability is no longer there.
I Digg stories in upcoming from casual users all the time. However, I can’t live in upcoming with all that spam there. That’s why I go to my friends’ upcoming page. I typically trust what my friends submit because they submit stories that interest me. I liked getting “recommended news” based on my friends (all my friends’ stories were recommended to me, essentially, in the old system, and then I could pick and choose. I did. I typically had 600-1000 stories in upcoming and didn’t Digg all of them). That was a great old system. Sure, it had some flaws, but overall, it was wonderful. Putting a haphazard system in place without the recommended feature story, however, was a terrible mistake.
Tamar,
I agree with your comments 100%. Right on girl! Right on!
Mike
I do agree with tamar comments..awww this new digg sucks…the pages are loading very slolwy….it takes a long time…awwwwwwww kevin why you are experimenting silly things with digg.com…people are not happy with you.
Digg users need to be able to tag themselves for the types of stories they like (the 5 categories on the side are radically insufficient). In fact you should be able to send out shouts based on the tags, so that you don’t effectively send spam to a bunch of folks who don’t want to hear about your story.
Sure there may be some exceptions to this…but overall tagging would be a massive help. Chris Messina also makes the same argument about Twitter.
Its not the same digg as it used to be … we dont want another community site