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digg just updated their site and to clarify what has changed and what has been added, here is a tour of the updated site with before and after screen-shots.

first of all, here’s a ‘before’ screen shot of the home page followed by the new look.

starting from the very top, digg has removed the three-level layout which had the option of content-type (news, videos, and podcasts) on level one, the topics/categories displayed under it, and collapsible subtopics hidden within each topic. instead, they have opted to use a much more streamlined interface with each content-type displayed at the top and expandable as follows:

accessible from right under the content-types you still have the popular topics (such as world and business, technology, and so on).

the next big change has been made to the submitted story box.

with the new design, more importance is given to the title and the summary of the story. information about who submitted the story, when it was submitted/made popular, now joins the interaction options (like commenting, emailing, burying) at the bottom and all of the options are accompanied with fancy new buttons. the new layout is more efficient because it focuses on the content first and then gives you the option to interact with it and the rest of the extra information.

the one addition to the box is a button that allows you to select a story as a favorite. the button appears once you have dugg a story, and clicking it will add a story into the same archive where the ‘my number one’ stories were previously displayed.

the single most important change in the update is the new ‘one-click bury’ system digg has instituted. you are no longer required to give a reason for burying a story (though you still can if you want to). simply click the red x at the bottom of a story and you’re done. note that the option to bury a story exists only as long as you haven’t already dugg a story. unlike before, you can’t digg and then bury a story without undigging it first.

going back to the menu bar at the top, checking out your friends’ activity has also been made much easier. the total activity is displayed in a collapsible button at the top, and clicking it opens a drop-down menu allowing you to see the activity in more detail.

while much anticipated changes like a new comment system and a pictures section were not released in this update (which is largely cosmetic), there were some additional smaller changes as well. for example, the recent top stories section is now being displayed more prominently (thanks in part to the orange color), news and videos have been combined into one section (users can change this), and the ‘top in all sections’ lets you choose between all, news, and video.

overall, the update is great. the interface has been streamlined and compacted so that there is minimal clutter. the new design is not drastic and ensures that users will find it both easy to adapt to and more efficient to use.

Technorati Tags: digg, social media, social bookmarking, socially driven, design

imagine if your business meeting was being run by people that comment on internet message boards and blogs.

Technorati Tags: business meetings, internet, comments

bloglines has opened the beta of their latest version to the public, and it’s looking great. richard has a complete review and tour of the 3.0 beta, but here is a snapshot of the two main new features:

1. drag-and-drop management for the feed page and personalizeable start page

the drag-and-drop functionality lets you manage your feed page as well as your personalizeable start page by simply dragging items across panes.

2. three different views for reading your feeds

you can view all your feeds in one place (the quick view), read the titles and clippings from posts one by one (the full view), or, use the three-pane view that separates the feeds, the post titles, and the post contents into separate panes (the view is reminiscent of desktop mail applications).

Technorati Tags: bloglines, rss, feed reader

while scoble’s earlier commentary on why he thinks mahalo, techmeme, and facebook will kick google’s butt in four years may provide us an interesting look at where the future of search may lie, it certainly isn’t correct in its central hypothesis. in fact, the argument he makes is not far from the older argument that wikipedia will kill google (google share of search has increased over 130 percent since that claim).

truth of the matter is that the wikipedia relies on google for financial and hardware/bandwidth support. not only that, but over 50 percent of wikipedia’s traffic comes from google (over 1.6 billion users, which accounts for around 2% of google’s outbound traffic).

let’s look at the 3 contenders mentioned by name and if they stand a chance against google individually, and then let’s see if they stand a chance if they pool their collective strengths.

contender number 1: mahalo

the first reason why mahalo won’t affect google is the same reason wikipedia hasn’t been able to do so. rich skrenta, the founder of the open directory project (dmoz.org) has elaborated in much detail on why mahalo must rely on search and seo for success. furthermore, acknowledging that the top 10,000 search queries make up 24 percent of all searches, mahalo plans to cover only those queries. what this means is that mahalo will serve google results for 76 percent of all searches.

that said, scoble correctly points out in his example that mahalo is great for some verticals (i.e. if you want to book a cheap flight or buy an hdtv)

contender number 2: techmeme

techmeme works off a list of only a few thousand sites that it monitors continuously and then constructs a ‘what’s happening on the web right now’ page that changes in real-time based on linking activity. the higher up a post is displayed, the more important it is. this linking and displaying of the content is done automatically and the only part where editorial judgment comes in is in creating the original ‘seeding list’. this list is hand-picked by the site’s founder to ensure that the content displayed on techmeme is always of interest to techmeme’s readers.

once you understand they way techmeme works, it begins to look more like a competitor for socially driven news and content sites. while techmeme is a great tool for discovering what is happening at any given moment it’s not good at all if you want to find some older content. in fact, the aggregator doesn’t even have search functionality and you have to look for old content by entering a date on the main page of the site (which means you’re lost if you don’t know the exact date an article was published). while i love the ‘content discovery’ and the ‘conversation grouping’ features of techmeme, if i want to find an old conversation from the site, i find myself going back to google and using the ‘site search’ operator.

even if techmeme included search functionality on their own site, the fact that they index only a few thousand sites takes them out of the running.

contender number 3: facebook

scoble’s mention of facebook and the role of social networking (along with social search) in improving the trustworthiness and accuracy of search results isn’t a completely new idea and in fact google has the technology, they just haven’t integrating it into their search engine. if they wanted to at any point (i.e. if they felt that it needs to be done) they could easily use their own social networking site, orkut, along with google co-op custom search to offer any benefits of an integrated socially-networked social-search engine.

so what now?

as we can see, each of these contenders on their own are not strong enough to take on google (and in some cases either rely or need to rely on google to succeed). and as for scoble’s idea of a united entity, that takes their collective powers to compete with google, i think we mustn’t forget that google has the following entities that it has yet to completely incorporate into it’s search:

1. Google Search
2. Google Co-op
3. Blogger
4. Google Reader
5. Orkut
6. Dodgeball

combining google search with blogger and google reader, google could create a techmeme-like technology, and then combining orkut (and even dodgeball) with google search and google co-op custom search, google could very well create a mahalo-facebook-like socially-networked social-search site. ultimately, I think a more interesting scenario to hypothesize about is what happens if/when google incorporates all these products into a new google search?

Technorati Tags: google search, mahalo, social search, techmeme, blogs, facebook, social networking

scoble has a three-part video series up on his site arguing that technologies like mahalo, techmeme, and facebook will disrupt the search industry and kill google in four years.

Part I of Social Graph Based Search. 14:41 minutes.
Part II of Social Graph Based Search. 15 minutes.
And a bonus round III. 6 minutes.

while scoble goes on to say that his post is too short to show up in either google or techmeme, i found it on the latter of the two sites.

Technorati Tags: robert scoble, mahalo, techmeme, facebook, social networking, search, google, social graph

until the recent announcement of twitter people search it was incredibly difficult to know who was using the service and find that user on the site. the initial implementation of ‘people search’ was a small step towards adding that functionality which is now greatly improved thanks to a new ‘find and invite‘ tab accessible at the top of the page.

you can add people by using your gmail address book and if they’re not currently using the service, you can invite them to join by email. if they are already on twitter, you can also look for them by using a first name, last name, url, geographical location, and more.

Technorati Tags: twitter, micro-blogging, people search, find and invite

with the launch of ‘hey nielsen!‘, nielsen media research is going social. the site, which is described as ‘part opinion engine, part social network, and part buzz tracker’, aims to be your social network of choice for discussing and influencing the entertainment industry.

Hey! Nielsen was created by the Nielsen Company, the leader in media and market research. We have the ears of the most influential people in the entertainment business and they want to know what you have to say! Prove yourself as an influential and trusted source on the site, and you’ll be moving from “fan” to “insider” in no time.

the site is in private beta and only nielsen employees can currently register. i have asked for a beta invite and will let you know as soon as i get one.

Technorati Tags: hey nielsen, nielsen media research, social networking, opinion engine, buzz tracker, entertainment, industry, private beta

peteris krumins has written an incredibly well-done guide for developing a reddit-like, media-focused site from scratch. the end result of his project can be found at reddit media. check out the guide and the site for some intelligent fun online.

What is reddit?

A source for what’s new and popular on the web — personalized for you. We want to democratize the traditional model by giving editorial control to the people who use the site, not those who run it.

Technorati Tags: reddit, media, socially driven, social bookmarking, intelligent, fun, online

sure, facebook is a fun and easy-to-use social utility, but business aren’t too happy with their employees utilizing it at work. in fact, according to estimates from the sydney morning herald, there are about 800,000 workplaces in australia, and for each employee that uses facebook for one hour a day the employer loses $6200 per year.

Richard Cullen of SurfControl, an internet filtering company, estimates the site may be costing Australian businesses $5 billion a year. “Our analysis shows that Facebook is the new, and costly, time-waster,” he said.

taking this into account, its a wonder only 43% of all businesses block facebook at work.

Technorati Tags: facebook, social networking, surfcontrol, australia, time waster

a majority of the features offered by most social networking sites (facebook is an exception because of f8) are identical, so what really separates one from another is the intuitiveness and usability of the user interface. and the lack of a well-designed user interface was exactly the reason why i signed up for orkut and gave up on it after 15 minutes of use. now, orkut is finally getting a redesign that might bring it out of web 0.5.

Just as you change your profile picture to keep with the times, we’re updating the look of orkut. The change isn’t live yet, but starting soon, we will start rolling-out the new look. To start, we will roll it out to a small group of users randomly selected, and will continue to do so until everyone is on the new site. We’ll tell you a little more each day, so come back to the blog to get a few sneak peeks.

Technorati Tags: orkut, redesign, google