Digg – CyberSurge

Digg Gets Picture Section

Digg has been needing a pictures section for an extremely long time and finally one of its users has decided to create on himself.

It is in the form of digpicz.com, it basically aggregates all of the stories on digg with the “pic,” “pics,” “image,” etc. in the title then gives it to you in a digg-like fashion even allowing you to digg the pictures from within digpicz.com.

Similar to Digg’s top ten sections in the sidebar digpicz also has “top ten posters” and “top ten hosts” showing you who is submitting the most pictures to digg and showing you who is hosting most of those pictures.

This may just show you that digg may be getting too big, that they can’t respond to their users needs as fast as they used to. That isn’t good for digg, but is very good for its users with coding ability, especially since Digg has such a great API.

DigPicz.com

Digg.com Site Redesign

Digg.com got a nice redesign. I actually think that Digg is adding features that don’t necessarily need to be there and completely missing the most important feature, an image section. The features that they have added include an “All” tab and cleaned up navigation. I personally don’t really like the new site design. I think that the header on digg has gotten uglier and uglier with each design “upgrade.”

There is another feature which I think needs to be added and that is a “related links” box next to the digg story.

Instead of having a graphical ad they can have a list of links that are suggested by diggers as related to the story that they are currently viewing, it will also display 1 or 2 text ads displayed either site wide or category wide. This way Digg can keep generating revenue but also add some value to the users.

A lot of times I will see links in the comments, if Digg added this “related links” box it would separate commentary by diggers from other resources of information about the stories topic. The text ads would also be sitting right next to actual content instead of floating in the middle of no where as the current ads are. Of course the ads would be clearly labeled.

Digg Launches Digg Widgets

Digg has add a new item to its list of ever growing features. The newest addition is Digg Widgets which allow you to add a bit of Digg to your own website or blog. Choose from 5 different styles or create your own style.

You can customize what is shown in the widget such as, popular stories in specific topics, a top 10 list from a specific topic, stories dugg by a user, etc.

The new tool is pretty interesting and makes me wonder if you will start seeing this pop up on personal sites showing things that they have dugg. It would be an interesting way to display new information on your blog all the time.

Digg going crazy with HD-DVD Stories

Digg.com is a great social news website where the users choose which content they want to see on the front page.

Yesterday the digg community went crazy when a user profile and a couple of stories submitted contained the decryption key for HD-DVDs. Within hours digg was flooded with stories about the decryption key and about digg taking it down

This is a picture of the top stories in all categories during the fiasco:

Every single story is in relation to the problem.

I think that what they did was a little dumb and I think that if they had any problem with it they could be safe legally under dmca safe harbor but I’m not a lawyer.

Well, here are the 3 stories at the top from all categories from this picture:
What’s Happening with HD-DVD Stories?
“Digg Banned me for Typing a Number!”
Was it Worth it, Digg?

Digg had to make a statement about what they are going to do about it and what they think about the situation. They said in the top story above that they were sent take down notices and decide to comply. Then later in the link below they decided to not take down any more stories including the key, saying:

“But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.
If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.”

Digg’s Decision

WoW hits 8.5 Million

While digg.com was hitting its 1 miiiiiillionth user World of Warcraft was looking at numbers eight and a half times that much. According to ComputerAndVideoGames.com World of Warcraft has hit 8.5 Million users. Along with that comes word that The Burning Crusade which was the much anticipated expansion pack to the game has already sold 3.5 Million copies.

Its just amazing that this game has grown so much. I am one of the extremely few who have never played this game but with numbers like these there must be something appealing about it. I’ve planned on trying it out for quite some time now but never actually have. I might try it sometime, but as I just said I have been saying that for quite some time.

[via digg]

Diggnation at Beach Chalet Pictures

If you love podcasts, and digg, you have to love Diggnation. They recently had a live taping at Beach Chalet and Laughing Squid has a Flickr set up of pictures from the show, check’em out.

Digg Gets Rid of Top diggers list

In a long update on Digg the Blog, Kevin Rose announced that they have decided after long internal talks to remove the top diggers list. They have decided to do this because of people trying to game digg. The only way they could finally put a stop to this is to remove the list of people that were getting offered payments by others to get their content in the front page. If the people can’t find the highest diggers then they can’t offer payments to them.

You can check out the whole post here.

Digg’s New Merchandise

Well we all love Digg and if you don’t well then you should because its a great place to go for news. Well recently when Digg had its update they also released some new merchandise on Jinx. They have new T-Shirts, Hoodies, Hats, etc. I actually ended up getting one of those for Chirstmas, I got a zip up hoodie and it is probably my favorite gift because its comfortable and I’ll probably where it this winter and the next too. Everyone should go out and buy one or two of these items here, because its a great way to support you favorite social news site.