Digg Burrows Down a New Path

The popular news-aggregator site has launched a redesign to counter criticisms of its turn away from hard news. Will the changes help?

by Catherine Holahan

The user-generated Web sites revolutionizing the way information is consumed in the 21st century are confronting the same question America's revolutionaries faced in the late 1700s: How much power should you give the people? America's forefathers, of course, decided against giving the masses too much. They fashioned the government into a republic, insisting that a pure democracy left the state vulnerable to foolish decisions made by an uneducated, or emotional, public.

Digg, one of the most popular news-aggregator sites on the Web, founded by Jay Adelson and Kevin Rose, disagrees with that old constitutional wisdom. Instead of seeing tyranny in the masses, the company sees "wisdom in crowds." It relies on registered users to submit their best articles to its site. Users then vote on the stories by clicking a "digg it" button. The more "diggs" from the community, the better the placement the story receives on Digg's site (see BusinessWeek.com, 11/21/05, "How Digg Goes Deep").

Getting Personal

The company's voting strategy, however, has received some criticism recently as its community of users has ballooned from 80,000 Web-savvy early adopters in 2005 to roughly 700,000 online users, according to the company's statistics. Users are complaining that the larger audience is promoting more sensationalistic or humorous stories to Digg's homepage instead of the substantial news articles that attracted them to the site in the first place (see BusinessWeek.com, 11/25/06, "Shoveling on Digg").

Some users, such as blogger and PodTech Vice-President Robert Scoble, say they are increasingly turning away from Digg to less democratic, competing news-aggregator sites. "If I was going to tell a business executive to read something, I would go with Techmeme," says Scoble. "Digg brings you more weird stuff."

On Dec. 18, Digg launched an extensive redesign of the homepage that could address some of its core users' concerns. The site is planning more redesigns in 2007 to focus on personalizing the Digg experience. Digg also plans to expand into different kinds of content aside from news. Adelson, Digg's CEO, says the critics are in the minority. "There are always squeaky wheels," says Adelson, adding that Digg users have public profiles and want to develop reputations for digging quality content. "Most feel their experience has improved based on the increased numbers."

Helping to Sift

The extensive redesign of the homepage includes more categories for information in the main navigation bar, including a category for podcasts and videos. The expansion is the latest in a series that included the June addition of world and business news, science, and gaming (see BusinessWeek.com, 6/22/06, "Digg Expands Into New News Areas").

In theory, providing additional ways of segmenting information should let users more easily find the content that most matters to them and avoid the stuff they don't care about. Thus the initial tech audience could still find the serious technology articles under the tech industry news section and avoid some of the more lighthearted content such as a video of a golfing parrot.

Of the redesigns to come in 2007, most will focus on personalizing the Digg experience, says Adelson. Though he declined to get into specifics, the site will offer more categories of information and improved social-networking features (think, for example, about having a homepage filled with the latest stories marked by other users identified as friends, instead of just seeing the wider audience's top picks).

Not all the future changes sound as if they will be easily embraced by the core audience, however. Adelson says the site will expand into different kinds of content, aside from news.