Digg is a great site - I use it daily to get myself up to date. Digg is one of the best news filtering service out there. A small definition of digg(for those who were living under a rock)...
Digg is a news website with an emphasis on technology and science articles. It combines social bookmarking, blogging, and syndication with a form of non-hierarchical, democratic editorial control. News stories and websites are submitted by users, and then promoted to the front page through a user-based ranking system.(From Wikipedia)
Like many other users of Digg, I too have a list of features I would like to see in Digg. These are the top 5(+1) features that are missing from digg.
Tagging
I just don't understand why this feature is not present in Digg. Digg is a poster boy for Web 2.0 and tagging is one of the core features of Web 2.0. Even Slashdot brought in tagging.
Bookmarking option - without digging
Many people digg an article because they want to mark it for reading latter - not because they read the article and liked it. I have done this many times. But if there is an option to 'bookmark' an article without digging it, the users will use that feature - giving more each digg more weight.
Link to original story in the feed
The Digg RSS feed is next to useless as it don't contain the link to the original story. The links is for the comment page for that story in Digg. I understand that diggs will lose some traffic if there is no need for the user to visit the front page, but is this a good long term strategy? Guys, you are a Web 2.0 site - you really have to provide a good feed. You if want, you can include the link to the comment page in the 'description' section, but please, include the link to the original articles.
New Stories
Despite what my friends think, I don't check Digg once every 10 seconds. The actual time is more like once every 10 hours or so. The problem is a lot of feeds get promoted to the frontpage in that time. So there is a good chance that I will miss out some of the digged articles. I would like a page that would show all the stories that have been promoted since the last time I visited that page.
For example, say I visited this non-existent page http://www.digg.com/new/ at 2006-09-23 10:00:00. The interface will be similar to that of the frontpage. I browse through the list of stories, merrily digging away. After my 'digging run' is over(say at 2006-09-23 10:30:00), I visit some other site, do some coding etc. till I feel the craving to check Digg again. So I visit the 'New' page again. Now only the diggs that has been promoted after 2006-09-23 10:30:00(time of the end of the last digg run) will be shown.
You would have to be logged in for this feature to work, which would be a good thing for Digg. If you don't want to log in, this can also be implemented using a cookie.
This feature is for the frontpage diggs - but can also be implemented for the 'Upcoming' Diggs too.
Link to external services
A link to external services like del.icio.us would be nice. Digg have provided a 'Blog This' options(which I have never yet used). But a much more helpful feature is a small link next to every post - "Bookmark this link in Del.icio.us". Or 'Seed this story in Newsvine'. Or whatever.
Bonus Feature : Pictures
Even though this feature is not essential, I thought it would be great if each story has an images associated with it to the right - like in del.icio.us or tech.memeorandum. Right now, images are only available for video links.
Your 'most wanted' feature for digg not here? If you have any feature that you would like to see in Digg, leave a comment.
Happy Digging.
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