If you are sharing content on the web these days, chances are you are doing it either through Facebook or Twitter. That is obviously not good for Digg, the pioneer of social sharing. Unfortunately for Digg, they lost ground to the above mentioned two platforms. Is there a way for Digg to get there prominent status back? They just added another change to the mix that I suspect is going to make a major difference for Digg….
I am getting ahead of myself. Let’s start at the beginning. Digg has been in a state of change lately. They announced a major overhaul not to long ago and this week there CEO Jay Adelson stepped down. Founder Kevin Rose has taken over as acting CEO. I am not sure whether this change was part of the total change package that Digg is preparing, but it sure makes for some interesting news.
Let’s take a look at how Digg is different from Facebook and Twitter. Both giants are focusing on sharing links with their readers. Neither of them focuses on ranking the links. This is the core focus of Digg and any other social bookmarking site. As long as Digg continues to focus on ranking stories in order of importance (to the reader), they have a competitive edge over Facebook and Twitter.
I believe that Digg realizes this given the changes they have announced. Let’s take a look at them. First of all they are planning on giving every user their own home page, similar to Facebook and Twitter. This home page represents the interest of the user. It gives the user the opportunity to attract like minded people, which is exactly what is so attractive on Facebook and Twitter. With the arrival of personal home pages, Digg will create more personality and this will appeal to the users.
The second change of significance within Digg came after Kevin Rose took over as SEO. He immediately announced that the “Diggbar” is going to disappear (if you don’t know what the Diggbar is, you can check out my blog post from August about the Diggbar) You can get the Diggbar to your screen by typing digg.com in front of the current URL.
This may sound like no big deal, unless you have followed the developments at Digg for the last few years. Let me fill you in. Digg used to be a do-follow social bookmarking account, resulting in a lot of link juice from this PR 8 website. With the arrival of the Diggbar, this all went by the wayside. When you bookmark a story to Digg, the link juice goes to Digg, rather than you. In other words, bookmarking to Digg does not result in backlinks to your site.
That does not mean that you should not use Digg for your bookmarking. Now that a lot of the original power users have left, the competition has gone down and it has become easier to get traffic from Digg than it used to be.
The most recent announcement by Kevin Rose to remove the Diggbar with the next release could mean that getting backlinks from this high PR website may be in the picture again. If that happens, expect a massive return of users to Digg.
Even though I expect that the above changes are going to have a significant positive effect on Digg, I do believe that the reason that will make the biggest difference will be the fact that the web produces so much content that it has become impossible to keep up. Remember, we are now back at the original function of a social bookmarking site – to store useful information for later use. Ultimately, I believe that this is why Digg is going to make a strong comeback and be the third influential social media site of the future. Especially, if they manage to make their site user friendly for the smaller user like you and I.
What do you think? Is Digg going to help define the future of news or will all the attention continue to go to Facebook and Twitter exclusively.
