Dot Com Mini Mogul: New Digg Updates Announced

On August 31, Digg announced the appointment of new CEO Matt Williams (ex Amazon). Along with this change, Digg has implemented a number of updates that will be rolling out this week. According to Kevin Rose at Digg Blog, the new changes will include a number of fixes:

An update to the algorhythm stops single user domination on the home page - upgraded to the new v4 platform.
Uppercase/lowercase issues are fixed
Thumbs icon will be reinstated
"My news" will include timestamps

Upcoming changes will include a return of "upcoming stories" and a ranking of Digg users by interests and digging behaviour.

The Digg user ranking will be a useful addition as it will make it easier to choose Diggers to follow. For example, if I am interested in Baseball news, the content and Diggers will be neatly organized for me to view, follow and Digg.

Suggestions for possible improvements:

Broader category list - The Digg categories are a little broad and a little vague. Business/Entertainment/Gaming/Lifestyle/Offbeat/Politics/Science/Sports/Technology/World News

Many Diggers have reported the experience of constantly submitting to "Offbeat" for lack of a more definitive category. Offbeat connotes "wacky" and this may not always be appropriate when submitting a serious article with no known category.

Possible additions to categories:

marketing
blogging

lifestyle
hobbies
home/family
travel
shopping

Digg button codes are a different story. You can add a category embedded in your "digg this!" button choosing from this wider range of categories:

arts_culture

autos

baseball

basketball

business_finance

celebrity

comedy

comics_animation

design

educational

environment

extreme_sports

food_drink

football

gadgets

gaming_news

general_sciences

golf

hardware

health

hockey

linux_unix

microsoft

mods

motorsport

movies

music

nintendo

odd_stuff

olympics

other_sports

pc_games

people

pets_animals

playable_web_games

playstation

political_opinion

politics

programming

security

soccer

software

space

tech_news

television

tennis

travel_places

world_news

xbox

The site has integrated a Twitter like "follow" feature and as of right now, the site is working nicely. Your Diggs are now automatically sent to your followers. There were a few teething problems during the last hour but the amusing error pages made up for any inconveniences:

According to the error messages, it is only around 28% likely this is Matt's fault. Presumably when Matt takes a larger role, his likelihood of involvement will increase!