The new version of Digg launched today to mixed reviews, good ideas and lots of fail. Comments across the web from places like Facebook and Twitter show that a lot of users have experienced the same problems I have: horribly slow loading times, problems logging in, discrepancies in the number of Diggs and other errors.
So is the new Digg a good or a bad thing? Well, it looks like a little of both.
I first noticed the new Digg was online today when I tried to submit an article to the site in the early hours of the new launch. Boy was that a mistake. I go to submit new content, and it asks me to log in. No big deal, right? Wrong! I clicked the log in button only to wait for about 3 minutes on my high speed 10mbps connection. I then fill out my username and password only to receive an error message. Half an hour later I try the same thing again with the same problem. A little later I try again. The log in was a success, or so I thought. The site showed I was logged in, but as soon as I go to submit the article I tried to submit over an hour ago, it shows I am logged out. So I log in again, try the same thing and get the same error.
Eventually I got that new article submitted, and start taking a look around. One of the first things I notice is all the articles for my site have 0 Diggs. That problem was corrected about an hour later, but it still worried me a bit when it happened. After all this, the site was still slow but getting much better. I can now submit articles, view articles, digg them all like I could before.
Kevin Rose (of Digg) tweeted awhile ago that 30 new servers were being installed. Wait, shouldn’t you have planned for this? Didn’t you know all the bloggers and tweeters and a lot of casual Diggers would get on at the same time to review the site? Didn’t you have the site in beta for months so that the roll out would be smooth?
Obviously Digg was not prepared for what would happen today… not even close. Luckily it seems like they realized they screwed up big time and are working to correct the issues. Hopefully this will all be resolved tomorrow.
The New Digg… Features and More…
Now that we’ve gotten all the fail out of the way, lets talk about the new Digg in terms of features. The new design is the most prominent change. I really like this. Very simple, not cluttered at all, and easy on the eye. They did a good job on this (even though it is slightly reminiscent of Facebook).
Next, the damn Digg bar is gone. Kudos. I hated that thing. If you browsed away from the initial page but stayed in the same tab, you might accidentally try to Digg the old post. Most sites have Digg buttons now anyway so it really became antiquated.
Followers and Those following you… I actually like this better than the old system of “friends.” It reminds me of Twitter, but in a good way. You can see who you are interested and whose interested in you separately. Kudos to Digg on this one.
My Latest News/Top News was executed very well. As soon as I get onto Digg I can see the stuff I am most interested right away, but if I want to see everything it is only a click away. I like this a lot.
Conclusion…
Although the new Digg launch was full of problems, many of which should have been avoided, I think overall it is a positive change. Hopefully the new setup will allow the little guys a better chance of getting exposure. Only time will tell.
What do you think of the new Digg?
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October 13th, 2010 on 1:27 pm
[...] stories of the day, upgraded to Digg V.4. On the day of the upgrade launch, however, there were a lot of errors. The site was reportedly unreachable or unstable, there were discrepancies regarding the number of [...]