The re -launch of the Digg News Catch has entered testing, offering users a first glance at what the potential Reddit competitor, built for the AI era, has been stored.
At its height in 2008, the Digg website was valued at $ 175 million, but was split and sold for spare parts a decade later. In March, the original founder of Digg, Kevin Rose and co -founder Reddit Alexis Ohanian, worked together to bring the brand back and discover the site for a new generation of internet users.
Founders believe that the internet is flooded with AI bots and agents, who will create demand for online communities such as Digg that boost real human connections. They have also said they are also considering the use of technology to establish property, such as proof of zero knowledge, along with other tools that could verify if one is a human being before they can publish and participate in conversations.
On Friday, Digg started the iOS application to testers who are part of the community of first adoption. The application, which is in Alpha tests, provides a first glance in the direction of the Digg restart.
The application itself has a clean design, with a navigation bar at the bottom to move between the different sections of the service, such as the power, the search, the leaderboards and the user profile page.
Similar to Reddit, Digg offers a choice of power supply that allows you to see the content of the site in different ways. There are supplies to see the most popular content of the site (most Dugg), newer, wall and content that “heating”. These filters can be used in all Diggs or just your own flow, which is based on the communities you follow.
Unlike Reddit, there are only a few communities to participate for the time being, including those who focus on interests such as art, entertainment, sports, funding, food, music, science and technology, as well as those who ask questions (AMA) (the company says that the ability to create communities will be released.
As users share publications in these various communities, others can overturn or download them, store positions and leave comments.
Below positions, Digg utilizes AI to summarize the content of the article. This news trend has been spread in other applications such as Artifact, which are sold to Yahoo and modern news readers such as Particle. However, AI -based news summaries can hit or loseThat is why some publishers have cautious about their own websites.
Digg has not yet added other AI summary tools, such as the ability to explain the story on both sides or in simpler form, such as “Explain Like I Mane 5”, as well as these previous AI news applications had done.
Trying to differentiate upvote and downvote buttons from Reddit, Digg uses icons that are intended to look like. This design still needs work. As some pointed out, it is not clear what the image is intended to be upvote or Downvote. The icons could be read in every way.
The app also features bios user profiles, statistics, positions and achievements. For example, users can win “gemstones”, they are the first to dig a place that then trends across the platform. The earlier you are to discover and dig these positions, the more gemstones you earn.
There are also leaderboards in the mobile app that highlight the top daily posts, comments and finders, although Digg says he responds to user comments and has called back gamification elements to the desktop.
Most importantly, Digg has learned from his mistakes in the past and makes his new table with the time limit-that is, they are renewed every 24 hours.
In the previous version of Digg during the Web 2.0 season, Digg’s leaderboards dominated some people who then had to confirm the influence on what was tending. Users were organized to promote or bury the pages massively, and some even started charging to get stories on the front page.
While the restarted Digg may want to avoid these types of problems, including top plates in the application, it may send the wrong message.
Although the new application is in good shape – especially given that it is an alpha – what does not yet prove is why one will let Reddit use Digg instead. This impulse can come in time, as Digg allows users to create their own communities and adapt them to their preferences.
Rose suggested during a recent AMA that Digg would like to turn to AI to help design the community further below the road.
“We see a world where you finally have a conversation with a built -in LLM in Digg and say, hey, I want my community to appear like this … I want to be this widget here, or to be structured,” he explained.
