A long time favorite news aggregation site of marketers, Digg has released a new service titled 'Newswire.' This new service will help users both find and break upcoming news and is the first time that Digg is showing who 'buried' an article since the release of Digg Version 4. Newswire will essentially fast-track an article to the homepage of Digg, but will also give users more power to regulate upcoming stories. Other features of Newswire include customizable sorting and displays that can be tailored to each user and an in-page update system.  The updating system operates much like [...]

Related Topics: Search Engines: Digg

It's been a rough week for two of the bigger players in the social voting space. Propeller, an AOL-owned property that grew out of the old Netscape website, has announced on its home page that the site is shutting down on October 1st. The change was spotted by Search Engine Watch. Propeller was pitched as a challenger to Digg's throne. But that never materialized. Its home page is currently filled with submitted stories that only have one or two votes, many of which are spammy content about ATV rentals, plumbing, loans, and carpet services. Meanwhile, the king of social news/voting [...]

Related Topics: Search Engines: Digg | Search Engines: News Search Engines

After a couple months of beta testing with invited Digg members, the new version of Digg -- they're calling it "v4" for Version 4 -- is now live and open to all. Digg founder Kevin Rose announced it here, but that blog post is down as I write this. In that announcement, Rose says the new Digg is a major revision of the site's front-end and back-end, and promises ongoing changes and new features. Rose says that the new Digg is faster -- to submit content, vote for content, etc. more personal -- members can use a custom "My News" home page to see activity from other members they fol [...]

Related Topics: Search Engines: Digg

SEOs (and probably a lot of others, too) are celebrating with today's news that Digg will shutter its toolbar and unban all previously banned domains. Digg's new CEO, Kevin Rose, says the changes will happen with the upcoming relaunch of Digg.com. The DiggBar launched almost exactly a year ago, and was immediately met with criticism from publishers who didn't like their content being framed, and from search marketers who pointed out that it robbed sites of credit for inbound links. Digg later changed how the DiggBar works in response to these criticisms, but in his announcement today, Rose [...]

Related Topics: Search Engines: Digg | Search Engines: Social Search Engines | Social Media Marketing | Top News

Steve Rubel reports that Google has released a new iGoogle Gadget named What's Popular. The gadget looks like a small little Digg clone to me. Here is a screen capture: As you can see, you can mark up or down a story and it shows the number of "pops" next to the story, plus when it was first added. You can even submit your own stories and keep track of your submissions and "my pops." If you maximize the gadget, you can further filter the stories. Here is a screen capture: I wonder if this will catch on? We remember when AOL turned Netscape into a Digg clone and it failed. [...]

Related Topics: Google: Gadgets | Search Engines: Digg | Top News