In an interesting nugget of Friday afternoon news, Michael Arrington of TechCrunch has posted an article featuring a preview of the upcoming fourth version of the social news site Digg. Founder Kevin Rose has published a glorious 1080p video to YouTube aimed at explaining the new features to publishers. Among the most interesting features is the inclusion of social network contacts into the Digg ecosystem, as well as the ability for publishers to auto-publish stories to Digg via an RSS feed.
Just like when joining most Web services these days, users will be asked to search their Facebook and Twitter accounts (among others) to follow friends and contacts via Digg. The Digg homepage will then default to a page consisting entirely of stories dugg by the users they choose to follow. When browsing articles either on the social “My News” section, or on the more traditional “Top News” tab, users will be able to see which stories their friends have dugg, as well as view their friends’ comments directly in-line with the story.
Rose says these new features play into the hands of publishers because the viral aspect of sharing stories with friends will help stories achieve higher digg counts. If one person diggs a story, it shows up on the homepages of their followers, and if they digg it, the process continues. To make the process of getting articles online even simpler, publishers can now claim their RSS feeds and automatically publish their content on Digg without having to visit the site.
These changes and additions may be just what the doctor ordered for Digg which has had to continually delay these updates. Personally the preview looks pretty slick, and may actually bring me back to using Digg on a more regular basis. Check our Rose’s video below and let us know what you think in the comments.