Digg Removes the DiggBar for Regular Web Surfers
Digg, upon receiving many complaints from users and online publishers, has decided to remove the DiggBar toolbar – for regular users, not for Digg users. The toolbar was introduced by the social news website as a means to aid users in finding and sharing content, but its implementation only spurred a lot of controversy and plenty of negative user feedback.
In case you are not familiar with the DiggBar, here are the issues related to the toolbar that spurred the controversy. First of all, the original URL of the site where content was to be found was replaced by Digg’s own URL. Secondly, DiggBar URL would pop-up in search results and bookmarking services ahead of the original domain URL. You can understand how sites hosting original content would not appreciate this.
“Since we launched the DiggBar, we’ve received valuable feedback from the Digg community, publishers, SEO industry experts and Google. We believe that the DiggBar provides a more seamless way to discover and share content on Digg. Since the launch a little more than a week ago, roughly 45% of all Digging activity is now happening on the Diggbar and over 25% of all DiggBar users are discovering new content they otherwise wouldn’t have by viewing related stories and content from the same source. We’ve also seen a 10% increase in users sharing short-URLs across Twitter, Facebook, email and other places. Along with all of the positive feedback and results, we’ve also heard your concerns that we take seriously and want to address quickly. We are rolling out a few key changes over the next week or so,” explains VP Engineering with Digg, John Quinn.
The changes Digg plans to make are as follows:
- Anonymous users will no longer see the DiggBar provided short URL, they will see the original URL and they will be directed to the publisher’s content via a permanent redirect.
- The Diggbar will not be shown to anonymous users, only to logged in Digg users.
- Digg will make the option to give up on the DiggBar more obvious. If you don’t like the toolbar, you have an opt out alternative.
In case you are not familiar with the DiggBar, here are the issues related to the toolbar that spurred the controversy. First of all, the original URL of the site where content was to be found was replaced by Digg’s own URL. Secondly, DiggBar URL would pop-up in search results and bookmarking services ahead of the original domain URL. You can understand how sites hosting original content would not appreciate this.
“Since we launched the DiggBar, we’ve received valuable feedback from the Digg community, publishers, SEO industry experts and Google. We believe that the DiggBar provides a more seamless way to discover and share content on Digg. Since the launch a little more than a week ago, roughly 45% of all Digging activity is now happening on the Diggbar and over 25% of all DiggBar users are discovering new content they otherwise wouldn’t have by viewing related stories and content from the same source. We’ve also seen a 10% increase in users sharing short-URLs across Twitter, Facebook, email and other places. Along with all of the positive feedback and results, we’ve also heard your concerns that we take seriously and want to address quickly. We are rolling out a few key changes over the next week or so,” explains VP Engineering with Digg, John Quinn.
The changes Digg plans to make are as follows:
- Anonymous users will no longer see the DiggBar provided short URL, they will see the original URL and they will be directed to the publisher’s content via a permanent redirect.
- The Diggbar will not be shown to anonymous users, only to logged in Digg users.
- Digg will make the option to give up on the DiggBar more obvious. If you don’t like the toolbar, you have an opt out alternative.
