Digg, which was set up nearly three years ago, has offered its users new enhanced social networking opportunities. This is the first stage of a number of developments for the site that will see it becoming more community based in the coming year.The latest advances at the social bookmarking website will see users able to create more detailed profiles that will allow for easier sharing of information with friends or people of similar interests. User profiles will be able to include biographies, photographs, favourite articles and recent activities. Each profile has privacy settings that can be set so that "anybody", "only friends" or "nobody" can view information, giving users full control over their data.
Kevin Rose, founder of Digg announced:
"We've completely revamped our profiles from the ground up - making it easy for you to share your favourite stories and discover new interesting content by seeing what your friends are digging. It's also even easier to find and add friends on Digg."
The "recent activity" feature will allow others who can view the profile to see the articles that the user has been reading. This should allow for articles to be more easily shared between friends with the same interests. Further to this, articles can be sent directly to friends who users think will be interested in their content. More information can be found in a video found on Digg's blog.
The new system will make finding and adding friends on the site easier, which should help create smaller communities within the larger dig community as a whole centred on common interests. Comparisons have been made to the similarities with other social networking sites, such as the inclusion of bios, photograph albums and user messaging. While the new system should help with user interaction, it also opens the door to further advertising opportunities.
With social networking sites holding such a wealth of information about users, the possibilities for better targeted advertising evolves. Sites such as MySpace and Facebook are able to offer advertisers greater opportunities as their users volunteer quantities of information that allow for more targeted marketing at specific groups. By building a social networking element into Digg, not only will the content be more targeted, but the advertising could also be more specific.
Further to this announcement, Kevin Rose has listed more developments due to take place on the site. Next month should see the launch of "Digg Images" that will allow users to digg pictures, as they can currently do with videos and podcasts. On top of this, "Digg Alert" will enable users to set up email alerts that will summarise popular articles on specific topics, while "Story Suggest" will provide recommendations of stories and friends based on articles that users have previously dugg.
