Version 3 of Digg launched late last month with tweaks to the user interface, and new categories to expand Digg beyond technology news. The release, along with user stats that show massive growth, pushed Digg into the consciousness of mainstream Internet users for the first time. For more information on version 3 of Digg, listen to our podcast with the Digg founders, Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson, at TalkCrunch.
More features are coming at Digg, and we have screenshots of two of them from a Digg tester – Digg Stack and Digg Swarm. Swarm and Stack will launch on Monday, July 24, 2006. Scott Beale took photos of earlier versions of these products (swarm, stack) from the Digg launch party last month. As far as I know the shots below are the first clean images on the web. There is also news around the addition of Sports as a new Digg category.
Digg Sports
Sports will be added as a topic category in early August. Current categories include Technology, Science, World & Business, Videos, Entertainment and Gaming. With the addition of sports, new mainstream Internet audiences will have an additional reason to visit Digg for news.
Digg Stack
Digg Stack is a Flash based visualization application that shows diggs occuring on stories in real time. There are two screen shots below. The first shows multiple stories (each a vertical bar at the bottom). As Diggs are added to a story, blocks fall downward to the vertical bar, making it higher relative to other stories. The second shot shows a single story (which is viewed by clicking on a bar in the first shot). Digg activity over a period of time is illustrated within that story window.
Digg Swarm
Digg Swarm is also a Flash based visualization application. It shows stories (transparent circles) that are larger based on the number of Diggs. The yellow dots are users, which flash on and off the screen as they digg stories. Some stories show multiple linking users, which suggests stronger momentum for that story.
The combination of Swarm and Stack, along with the existing Digg Spy, will give users more information on what news is developing in real time, over and above what can be viewed on the Digg home page or individual topic pages. For users who are interested in truly breaking news, these tools will be useful.