Spy shot of Digg’s new voting feature for upcoming items
TechCrunch posted this blurry screenshot that shows a Digg homepage with what seems to be a voting feature added onto the items in the Upcoming section. Digg execs won’t tell TechCrunch’s Mike Arrington what it is, which means Arrington will take an extra 45 minutes to find out once the happy hour starts in Digg’s engineering department. It looks like digg/bury controls to me.
Digg starts letting users vote on advertising
Digg, the super-popular but still not-profitable news aggregator, announced today that it’s starting to roll out the vote-on-ads system that it announced in June.
On Digg, users vote news stories up or down — and with the Digg Ads program, they’ll be able to do the same with advertising. Those ads show up in the stream of news stories (they’re labeled as “sponsored”), and users can Digg them, share them, or bury them.
Those votes don’t just… Continue Reading
Digg will finally allow other sites, apps to add content
Social news site Digg, founded by camera-friendly CEO Kevin Rose (pictured), is still going strong even if it has been edged out of the limelight by Facebook and Twitter. Digg is now developing a new application programming interface (API), however, that’ll make it much easier for developers of other websites, and those who make applications for either desktops or phones, to integrate Digg into their creations.
The API will allow other websites or applications to submit… Continue Reading
Why Bit.ly may beat Digg
URL shortening services may seem trivial, but they’re a potential goldmine of information about what humans on the Internet, not automated bots, find valuable or at least interesting.
Compared to, say, Google Maps, the way a URL shortener works is blessedly simple: A human Web surfer or automated Web server gives Bit.ly a URL, for example http://www.verylongname.com/very_very_very_long_url.html.
In return, Bit.ly gives back a short URL that looks like this: http://bit.ly/YZLpD.
The user or server publishes the Bit.ly URL… Continue Reading
Digg developer upgrade includes better search, story-finding tools
Social news aggregator Digg just expanded its set of application programming interfaces — the services that allow third-party developers to build software using information from the site. Changes in the APIs include better search and article discovery. Digg has been working to make more of its data available to third parties, as part of its plan to be the largest news aggregator on the web.
From the company blog post:
One of the most requested features has been… Continue Reading
Digg users to get ads they can vote on (and price)
Digg is planning to introduce a new form of advertising in a few months, where ads appear within the social news aggregator’s river of content. Like stories themselves, these ads can be “dugg” (voted up) or “buried” (voted down). The company has cleverly priced these ads so that the more people digg an ad, the cheaper it is; the more the buries, the more expensive. So companies have the incentive to offer ads that users… Continue Reading
Digg snatches top advertising sales executive Chas Edwards
updated
Digg, the site that ranks news stories, has hired highly respected advertising sales executive Chas Edwards to become chief revenue officer.
It’s a major blow for Federated Media, where Edwards was publisher & chief revenue officer. Edwards built up Federated’s sales team from scratch, closing the company’s first deal almost four years ago for about $5,000. Federated’s chief executive John Battelle two weeks ago announced he was searching for a new leader for the company. In… Continue Reading
Digg dumps Shouts for Facebook, Twitter and email
Not only have Twitter and Facebook stolen Digg’s media buzz, they’ve now invaded founder Kevin Rose’s home turf. The Digg company blog has verified that the site no longer supports its Shout social-networking feature. Instead, Digg will let members use Facebook, Twitter and email to share stories posted to Digg’s website.
The little-used but often-exploited Shout was meant to encourage Digg users to interact with one another directly, rather than posting public comments. But for many… Continue Reading
Ditched by potential parents, Digg grows up on its own
When it comes to web 2.0 startups, the social news site Digg is like an old man. Launched in 2004, it quickly exploded on to the scene and became both a web and media darling in relatively short order. So now it seems like it has been around forever, and for at least the past year or so, has been pretty quiet when it comes to product buzz. Instead, the biggest news about the company… Continue Reading
Video: Trent Reznor’s insights into the future of music as a business
By now, everyone realizes that the major music labels have royally screwed up in the transition to digital distribution over the Internet. Digital rights management (DRM) and suing consumers among other errors in judgment seem only to exacerbate problems like piracy. Even today, we’re seeing another potential problem arise with the change in pricing structure for songs on iTunes. Let’s be clear: Apple didn’t want to do this, but the music labels forced its hand… Continue Reading
The DiggBar features sponsored links as well
In reviewing Digg’s new DiggBar yesterday, I noted that it did feature advertising if you activated certain drop-downs such as a list of other stories from the same source. That seems like an okay way to make some money, but ultimately, Digg users probably aren’t going to be clicking on those ads too often. But I just stumbled upon another monetization model for the DiggBar: sponsored links.
If you click on the DiggBar’s “Random” button a… Continue Reading
Digg, Facebook and Google: Whose toolbar is it anyway?
News aggregator Digg and social network Facebook have been working together for many months to let their users share links to news articles and other content between the two sites. In the latest example of that, the new Digg toolbar inserts itself over the web page that you’re on and lets you share the page on Facebook. But what happens when your friends on Facebook see the link — a digg.com URL — and click… Continue Reading
With DiggBar, Digg wants to be central to sharing content on the web — and it could work
The main problem I have with Digg these days is that I have to go to digg.com to use it. Sure, there are other ways to see stories on the site, such as RSS. But if you want to Digg a story, you have to go to the site. Not anymore.
Today, Digg has launched its DiggBar tool. Simply put, it looks amazing.
It’s a toolbar overlay that can be attached to any web page simply by… Continue Reading
March of the Diggs: Trent Reznor to be on Digg Dialogg
Every so often, the social voting news site Digg holds a “Digg Dialogg,” a chance for Digg community members to submit and vote on questions that will be asked of an interesting and/or powerful person. The latest announced guest is certainly interesting: Trent Reznor, founder of the rock band Nine Inch Nails, Digg co-founder Kevin Rose announced on the company blog today.
Reznor has long been a critic of digital rights management (DRM) as an effective… Continue Reading
The perfect advertisement on Digg
Since social voting site Digg first began, it’s been a common thought that Digg users don’t click on ads. While that’s generally been the rule of thumb for sites that Digg sends traffic to, it’s not clear just how much ad-clicking Digg users do on the site itself. But judging by the picture above, someone’s trying pretty hard to get users to give it a go.
The site’s been completely taken over by “Watch The New… Continue Reading
Google makes a Digg for the Recession
When I first read that Google was launching something called Tip Jar, I assumed it was again spreading its monetization strategy to now including taking tips (something which the service TipJoy does). But I was wrong. The service is a place where users go to submit and receive tips on how to best save money in our troubled economic environment. The users then rank those tips, to make it a sort of Digg for the… Continue Reading
The ugly truth about your favorite social networks
When it comes to social web sites and services, sometimes I think we like to talk about them more than actually use them. A recent post we did about Twitter getting half the press coverage of Facebook despite a fraction of the traffic, seems a bit indicative of this. So who is actually using these networks?
The site Brainz did some excellent overview charts of the various popular networks this week. Alright, so they aren’t actually… Continue Reading
Roundup: FriendFinder sued for risky business, Digg toolbar sighted, Nokia looks to laptops and more
Here’s the latest action:
Pirate Bay takes fascist funds — The large bittorrent tracker’s major financier, Carl Lundstrom, has been connected with neo-nazi groups and political parties.
Nortel lays off 3,200 more — The telecom company will cut its global workforce by 10 percent over the next several months as it tries to bounce back from bankruptcy.
FriendFinder called out for risky business — The adult web site’s former human resources director is suing over scandalous behavior and violation of labor… Continue Reading
Happy birthday, Yahoo Buzz. Who are you again?
Twitter, Digg, Facebook, Reddit, Delicious. These are all social sites that are well known for sharing stories with a massive amount of people. Yahoo Buzz? Not so much. But apparently, it’s also in the business of sharing stories. And today is its first birthday.
In a message it sent out on Twitter, Yahoo notes that a story is buzzed (voted on) every two seconds. It claims that 300 million story clicks have resulted from buzzed-up stories… Continue Reading
Digg not digging the economy, cuts 10 percent
Popular news aggregator Digg is laying off 10 percent of its 75 person workforce. Chief executive Jay Adelson announced a “headcount reduction in certain areas” this morning on the company blog and gave the 10 percent estimate to Webware’s Rafe Needleman.
It seems a bit disingenuous for Adelson to call the cuts “microscopic in size,” but they certainly don’t sound catastrophic. Digg is hardly alone in feeling the effects of the economic downturn. Just today, we’ve… Continue Reading