Can Digg’s facelift save its fading image?
By Triston McIntyre
The uber-popular social indexing site Digg.com has gone in for a facelift; the site is adding pictures and taxonomy to its normal fair. However, can the sleek new look and features revive Digg’s faltering image?
Kevin Rose announced that Digg.com will now include a pictures section to accompany the already existing news and video categories; one nifty feature, called the “image crawler” will allow users who link to a page with multiple images to “crawl” through a Digg-generated layout of thumbnails of all the images on that particular page to make a specific selection.
Additionally, there will be a “mosaic” view for all the images featured on Digg, and anti-duplication technology from Idée Inc. This way users can float around thumbnail layouts to images they wish to see without as much scrolling.
The “Universal Taxonomy” that Rose addressed is essentially an all-encompassing category, similar to slashdot’s “index” that will allow users to get the cream of the crop from every sub-category and avoid searching individual threads.
Though much-needed upgrades, Kevin Rose and Digg have been under pressure for the site’s method of choosing stories to make headlines. As Digg indexes large sites that rely on traffic revenue, the calculations and methodology behind one site headlining as opposed to another can make or break a site’s traffic and income.
Many have been questioning Digg’s methods as of late; though the website may have upgraded its features and style, Kevin Rose needs to focus his efforts on reviving the site’s image of under-handedness that is spreading like wildfire through the blogosphere.
New features and pretty upgrades can’t change what’s going on underneath the epidermis; just ask Joan Rivers.
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