You diggin' the new Digg News?
Sunday, March 14, 2010 at 8:44PM 
I'll be the first to admit that I haven't been a very steady Digg user for the last year or more. I'm actually down to checking the headlines about once a week on my iPhone as my interactions with the service.
Once the "power user" format began, it just didn't make any sense to "play the game". My participation didn't really make much of a difference to turning the tide and it was just going to be WAY too much work to rise in the ranks of Digg users. It reminds me of playing World of Warcraft. The average user gets discouraged by the speed of which the power gamers level up. When the gap is too big, the masses lose interest. You gotta make all your users feel as though they matter (easier said than done).
So the news from SXSW that Digg is making BIG changes from the floor up really has my attention.
1. Different kind of weights
I've been hearing Kevin Rose's conversations about this social weighting of users based on the strength of their followers and other social influencer analytics for the last few months. DON'T LET THIS FEATURE roll by w/o giving it it's proper due, it's going to be the engine to this thing. This finally breaks the "power user" structure and actually gives the power back to the social user. LOOK FOR THESE FEATURES TO START POPPING UP WITH SOCIAL MONITORING SERVICES.
2. Infinate possibilities
Digg is going to give the up trying to make their own categories and putting articles in their "proper" place. Instead, I'm hoping they'll take on a tagging tactic in order to add a whole lot of personalization.
3. Power to the People
The third part I'm digging most is the personalization of your own news feed. I'm picturing it to be similar to how my Twitter stream runs. I choose what info I want in my stream and it comes steadily at me and that stream is allowed to evolve with my changing interests.
So here's my bottom line:
My congrats to Digg for making such a fundamentally large change to their business. That takes some major, MAJOR rocks!
I've already signed up and can't wait to kick the tires. Maybe it can even somehow replace my Google Reader that lack of Social Media tools has really been annoying me lately.
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