The New Digg.com Is Upon Us, Should You Care

Over the weekend we received a notification that the new, fourth version of Digg.com was available in its alpha stage to try out. Before we start to give our feedback, we should add a caveat by letting our readers know that we are not heavy Digg users. The insane influence its power users had, along with the lack of strong social connections made it almost pointless for small brands or those too busy to see any value. If you did have a story take off, the coverage would be huge but the actual interaction (time on site, additional page views) was usually very low. With the launch of the new Digg, most of these concerns have been addressed, with only one question really remaining: Is it worth the time to add another social platform, or should you just stick with Twitter and Facebook?

Right from the start you will notice three changes that will really affect your Digg experience.

1. MyNews – much like your Twitter of Facebook news feed, Digg will now allow you to find and follow your friends, influences, and news sources you care about.  The new custom homepage or “My News” will display news stories produced by or “dugg” by your friends.  You will also have the ability to review submitted or dugg stories from publishers and users.
2. Followers start to matter – Aside from digging great content, having a strong following base will determine who strong your authority around content will be. Gone are the days of power users submitting an article and it ending up on the front page of Digg (thank goodness). What will be interesting is users who have massive Twitter accounts that start leveraging Digg as they can now link other social network accounts. Though this sounds exciting, as we know sometimes you can have 500,000 followers and if they don’t retweet or digg your content, does it really matter?
3. The classic Digg homepage is still alive – It just has been rebranded to Top News and is now second to your custom “My News” tab.  The Top News tab will continue to be global zeitgeist of the most popular stories on Digg.

So, with this change the main question is: Should you care?  Our answer is YES.  Digg is still a major player in the social world.  With more than 25 million visitors a month, consumers are actively looking for fresh and exciting content. Content that you, a brand, can create and earn considerable coverage from.  A number of of bloggers have felt that the social web does not need another news filter and that Twitter is enough. Digg is designed for content versus ‘what a user is up to.’  With this focus the new Digg has created an experience for users who love to consume news.

Bloggers, brands, and agencies should all keep an eye on Digg when it fully launches version 4 later this year.

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