Last week I heard that Digg were going to launch a new way of displaying web pages to users and this week I experienced it first hand (I don't use Digg very much). So I thought I was take a quick look and see how it effects different people.
What is it?
The new feature is called DiggBar and this is what you will now see when you visit a link from Digg. As an example I thought I would click on the first link on the Digg home page and take a screenshot. Here is the DiggBar in action on The Man Who Used To Know Everything.
DiggBar In Action
The only problem I have is that the DiggBar is a little flaky in Google Chrome…
DiggBar In Action On Chrome
Oh dear.
The main effect of this DiggBar is that you are viewing the page through Digg via an iframe. The url for the above example is http://digg.com/d1o0tZ, which looks kind of like something tinyurl.com would produce.
Why?
I think this is an attempt by Digg to get more people to use the site. Digg is a popular site and that getting you link on the front page can garner hundreds, if not thousands of page hits, but I think that they would like more people actually using it as a voting service than a kind of news service.
StumbleUpon have done something very similar recently, but this is just for people who don't or can't install the toolbar.
StumbleUpon Bar
Digg have also included a "Random" button on the bar that imitates the way the Stumble! button works.
How will it effect my site?
Well there is where things get a little hasy. Some people have said that this will effectively kill off using Digg for any Internet marketing. The main reason stated is that the page that Digg creates includes a title tag that might out compete the original site for a competitive keyword. Here is the title tag from my previous example.
<title>The Man Who Used to Know Everything (24 Hour Comic)</title>
My only problem with this approach is that it will still generate traffic. Even if the Digg page ranks well for a keyword it will probably be found on the same search result list as the original. However, I have checked a few sites in the last few minutes and these DiggBar pages don't seem to be ranking, it is only the Digg category pages that are in the search results. The reason appears to be with the structure of the link. Here is the link from the above example as found on the Digg home page (minus some tags that aren't needed).
<a href="http://stereotypist.livejournal.com/92575.html" title="http://stereotypist.livejournal.com/92575.html" rel="d1o0tZ" class="offsite ct-entertainment" target="_blank" onclick="gotoLink('11919845', '23d5786701c0c8215688ef30cf05344b');">The Man Who Used to Know Everything (24 Hour Comic)</a>
So the original link goes directly to the site in question, it is only a JavaScript link that opens up the DiggBar. Turning off JavaScript stops the DiggBar from appearing.
The main problem with the DiggBar that I can see (aside from the inherent problems with using frames) is that even if you navigate away from the page in question you are still left with the original DiggBar content and URL. It doesn't change. This is quite poor in terms of usability and accessibility but there is a close button in the top right hand side that will allow you to close. In fact, if you look at it closely it seems to resemble the StumbleUpon bar quite a bit; I wonder if this is the future of social bookmarking sites?
Philip Norton
Lead Developer, Research and Development
