Digg

WeFollow Twitter directory: Kevin Rose's latest

There's always a lot going down at the annual South by Southwest in Austin, Texas. As you probably remember, SXSW served as the original launchpad for Twitter, so it seems fitting that Kevin Rose's new Twitter directory, WeFollow, was launched there this year.

It's interesting, however, that Rose didn't choose to make his announcement during a talk at the conference, but rather through Twitter and Digg. At its core, WeFollow keeps track of different groups of Twitterers, as defined by tags, such as #tech or #celebrity and displays them in order of popularity.

Although current Twitter … Read more

Diggnation, now on Hulu

Everyone's favorite beer drinking techies, Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht, are now breaking down Digg's weekly top stories on Hulu with their wildly popular show, Diggnation. Thanks to a deal between Revision3 and Hulu, announced back in May, Diggnation is now featured on Hulu, alongside popular mainstream shows, such as Heroes and SNL.

While Diggnation has gained immense cult popularity, its availability on Hulu could help bring it to an even larger, more mainstream audience. Hulu (along with other online video sites) has definitely played a role in bringing even more popularity to shows in the past, with prime examples being the current It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and a renewed interest in the dearly departed Arrested Development. By putting this content in front of the eyes of a lot of potentially new viewers and allowing them to get into shows that they may never have seen before, these shows have been able to broaden their audiences.

Revision3 is leading the way in terms of becoming the poster child for web TV networks. Deals like this one with Hulu will only extend their reach. Click through for a Diggnation clip, courtesy of Hulu.… Read more

When the 'wisdom of crowds' turns on itself: IMDB edition

The concept of the "wisdom of crowds" is a fundamental building block of a lot of the Web 2.0 services that we see today. While not all of them are built on this core concept, major sites like Digg, Wikipedia, and Mahalo rely heavily on crowds being wise. There have been several instances of this system breaking down in the past, one notable occurrence being the infamous Digg HD-DVD revolt. On occasions like this, a mob mentality tends to take over a very vocal and active segment of a community, greatly skewing the product of their collective &… Read more

Would Google destroy Digg or take it to the next level?

Digg commenter Hiji writes, "This is the beginning of the end. In a few years all the major blogs and social-media sites will be owned by large corporations, putting us right back where we started."

The topic of discussion is, of course, TechCrunch's rumor that Digg will soon be acquired by Google for somewhere in the neighborhood of $200 million. Digg's users are debating what Google acquiring Digg might mean for their community in this thread on the site. The question is, would being controlled by a big company like Google ruin--or enhance--the community that Digg … Read more

Digg's recommendation engine slated for release this week

The social news/video/photo site, Digg, will be rolling out their long anticipated recommendation engine to users this week. The rollout will be starting with a random sampling of users and eventually moving towards the entire user base at the end of the week. Digg's recommendation engine will try to engage more users in the upcoming section of the site by recommending stories from similar users.

Digg's upcoming section, where stories wait for enough diggs in order to get promoted, has been very intimidating for users to jump head first into, given the volume of stories being submitted. It was fairly hard to sift through all of the crap in order to get to the real gems. Hopefully the introduction of a recommendation engine will make it a lot easier for users to find the quality submissions.

I believe that the addition of a recommendation to Digg is going to significantly help with the usability of the site and direct people towards the long tail of submissions. By adding a lot of new eyes to the upcoming section, Digg's homepage will certainly get a much fresher look than we have seen recently.

The other important factor to look at here is the apparent benefit that the recommendation engine will be giving to websites. Making content more discoverable on Digg means more traffic for the sites that the content has been submitted from. I suspect that more and more sites will begin to feel the Digg effect as a direct result of the launch of this feature.

The introduction of a recommendation engine should give Digg a nice jolt. I haven't seen the feature in action yet, but if it is implemented correctly, I see Digg becoming a much more valuable resource and frequented by a lot more people. Kevin Rose posted a couple of videos on the Digg Blog which you can see embedded below. The first is an overview by Kevin of the recommendation engine, complete with graphics and the second features Anton Kast, Digg's Lead Scientist, talking about the new engine. You can read his whitepaper on the subject here.… Read more

Facebook expands Mini-Feed to include Digg

Adding to Tuesday's release, Facebook has added an additional service for Mini-Feed importing, Digg.

This is a big win for Digg. Over the last six months, I have seen a significant increase in the usage of Digg by college students, and this inclusion in the Facebook Mini-Feed will only improve its reach in that demographic.

Of course, Facebook has expanded greatly beyond its initial college market, and the inclusion of Digg may alert a lot of users to the service for the first time.

A concern that I have with the integration is that your Mini-Feed will probably become … Read more

Reminder: Digg town hall tonight

In response to some of the recent community concerns, Digg is holding a town hall meeting tonight at 6pm Pacific/9pm Eastern on Ustream. Obviously Digg has a very strong and vocal community and this event should serve as a good venue for voicing opinions directly to those in charge.

Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson will be taking questions and responding to concerns, as well as talking about the future of Digg. Topics are likely to include censorship, moderators, Digg's new algorithm, and maybe even rumors of possible acquisitions.

This town hall should also serve as a means to … Read more

Newspond takes a shot at Digg and Techmeme

Mashable is writing about a new news site called Newspond. Their "about" page boasts that the site is "the most advanced news site on the planet." That's certainly a big statement to make, given the competition that already exists. Its main function is similar to that of Techmeme, with some of the social features of Digg thrown in for good measure.

At first glance, it appears that the content that is floating to the top of Newspond is very different to what is atop Techmeme right now. It's not clear whether this is due … Read more

Digg cracks down on group voting

Social news site Digg launched on Wednesday night a new algorithm to try to prevent groups from gaming the system.

The update effectively punishes people who vote in groups to promote certain stories. The result of the update is that stories that reach the homepage will need to be "dugg" by a diverse group of people.

"Digg's promotional algorithm ensures that the most popular content dugg by a diverse, unique group of diggers reaches the home page," Digg founder Kevin Rose said in a blog. "Our goal is to give each person a fair … Read more