New Digg (v4) Goes Live

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 follow, including many large publishers
• more social — activity from contacts is highlighted across the site

One of the major changes I see is hinted at in the second bullet-item above: Digg’s gone corporate. Its platform is now more friendly to large publishers and media outlets. CNN stories on Digg, for example, can be reached at digg.com/cnn. The New York Times is at digg.com/nytimes. And you can follow Search Engine Land content at digg.com/seland. (Our stories aren’t appearing yet, but we expect that to be fixed soon.)

In fact, I should remind fellow search industry folks that Digg announced a few months ago that all banned domains are now unbanned with the launch of the new Digg. That doesn’t mean Digg’s core users will be any more welcoming to SEO content, but it does mean you can at least try again if you’re so inclined.