Digg is emerging after a six-week hiatus with an image-heavy design devoid of advertising and stories chosen by editors that will be based on shares on Facebook and Twitter as well as Diggs.
“The final version is close to complete,” the new Digg team wrote on Monday. “When you visit Digg.com later this week, you’ll find a beautiful, image-friendly, and ad-free experience.”
The team didn’t provide any actual images from the site, which is set to launch Aug. 1, but did supply some mockups. Judging from those, the new design will provide more space to bigger stories and some articles without photos. “Some stories are bigger and have more impact than others; some stories are actually components of other ones. Some stories can be told with text; others are best told through images,” the team wrote.
Gone is the traditional blog design of the old Digg, which represented each story the same way — with a headline and a picture. The new Digg looks more like a news site with one lead story and nine to 11 off-leads and then a progression of smaller items. The design was based on a version 1 (v1) survey Digg gave to users a few weeks ago. The results showed 92% of respondents wouldn’t recommend Digg to a friend. Comments from users showed they wanted something different from the previous design, but also different from Reddit.
Aside from the design, a major new change is less emphasis on Diggs and a new weighting system for stories that takes into account shares on Facebook and Twitter as well. In addition, actual human editors will choose stories. “We learned, while building News.me at betaworks, that finding really great stories requires a mix of smart algorithms, smart networks and, not least, smart people to parse the two,” the blog continues.
The redesign comes after New York startup Betaworks bought Digg for a reported $500,000 last month. The purchase came after the 8-year-old site had been valued as high as $200 million.
