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Betaworks' Digg Relaunch Has One Fatal Mistake

Digg v1

Betaworks bought Digg, the website, for about half a million. It’s a complicated sale. Linkedin acquired the patents, and Washington Post got the talent (the engineers).

The first thing Betaworks did was relaunch the site on August 1st. I noticed because their RSS feeds stopped working on Wopular. They had rebuilt and redesigned the site from scratch in just six weeks.

Design-wise, it’s now a three-column site - like Wopular (and Pinterest) - with headlines and thumbnails spread within each column. It doesn’t look as organized as before when headlines only occupy one column.

 

A Failure In Rethinking Digg, And How To Bury A Dead Brand

Currently, the “New Digg” is facing a host of problems. Digg has 14 million pages indexed in Google, those pages are now 404′ed. Digg’s entire database of archived content vanished over night, including now-defunct user profiles. In one swift move, they’ve completely eliminated the community by removing each and every user account to exist,with little explanation and no answer to when users will be getting their accounts back.

 

Digg’s Decline by the Numbers: Plummeting Traffic, Waning Power

Digg’s Decline by the Numbers: Plummeting Traffic, Waning Power

When it comes to releasing a new product, users and pundits’ opinions only count for so much, but numbers — including revenue and traffic– don’t lie... This week, the web analysts at Hitwise gathered data showing a 34% decline in visitors in the U.K. and a 24% decline in the U.S. in the past 11 weeks.

Senh: There's something wrong with these charts. Shouldn't the week of the relaunch of Digg v4 show at least a slight increase in traffic? During the launch date, the news media and bloggers were writing about it, which should result in a traffic spike.

 

Reddit, Digg Rivalry Heats Up With #DiggRevolt

Reddit, Digg Rivalry Heats Up With #DiggRevolt

The brand new Digg is under fire on its first ever Monday from both its most loyal users and the competition at Reddit. Launched last Wednesday, Digg power users have launched a Digg Revolt today, some calling it "Quit Digg Day," and the Reddit community has embraced the feud.

Senh: This is pretty interesting. Digg's frontpage is still filled with Reddit links. It'll be interesting to see where this goes. Digg's redesign was aimed directly at lessening the powers of their hardcore users. Pissing off your most loyal users is never a good idea, but we'll see where this goes.

 

New Version of Digg Goes Live For Everyone This Morning

New Version of Digg Goes Live For Everyone This Morning

It's finally here. Digg, the social link sharing site that has watched its once-meteoric rise to popularity level off over the last couple years, is relaunching today as it attempts to surge to greater heights — with an added focus on making the site better for publishers as well as users.

Senh: My first immediate impression is that it's actually better. The design is simpler and more streamlined. Although I'm not sure if it should default to the My News tab for logged-in users. You should always make what made you popular the most important and prominent feature. In this case, it's the Top News tab, which is the top news items based on Digg users. I'm looking forward to auto-submission of news items via RSS feeds.

 

The New Digg: First Impressions

The New Digg: First Impressions

Ever since the new version of Digg was announced three months ago, it has undergone a lot of revisions and caused a lot of turmoil. In that time, Kevin Rose replaced Jay Adelson as CEO...

 

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