Digg Launches New Toolbar - Makes Digging and Sharing Easier
And we have a bookmarklet that makes it even better!
Digg, the popular social news site, just launched its long awaited DiggBar, a new toolbar that will appear on any page Digg links to. From within the toolbar, users can digg stories and share them with their friends on Twitter and Facebook. Digg will now also feature shortened URLs, and, maybe even more interestingly, Digg now also displays how many times a story has been clicked through from Digg.In addition, the new toolbar will allow users to see other stories on Digg from the same source, as well as related stories. Users will also be able to see some comments directly from the toolbar, though this is currently restricted to the latest, most controversial, and the most popular comments.
How to Get It
If you want to see the DiggBar in action, all you have to do is enter "digg.com/" in front of any URL, and the toolbar will automatically appear at the top of the page. Or, you can use our own DiggBar bookmarklet. Instructions for setting it up are at the end of this post.
More Features
The toolbar also features a prominent 'Random' button, that will, as the name implies, take you to a random page with a similar story that was popular on Digg in the last few days. This, of course, is very similar to what StumbleUpon does.
All of this, of course, will help to make Digg an even stickier site, as users will never quite leave the Digg experience behind, but at the same time, as MG Siegler points out on VentureBeat, this also shifts Digg's focus away from its own site, and turns Digg into a service.
No DiggBar Bookmarklet? No Problem - We Have One For You!
Sadly, Digg didn't provide users with a bookmarklet that would make it easy to quickly invoke the DiggBar without having to edit the URL, but our own Rick Turoczy just wrote up a bookmarklet for us - you just have to drag and drop this link to your bookmarks: digg bar.
After that, clicking on the link will invoke the DiggBar for any site you are currently visiting.
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I never really got into digg, this toolbar is interesting though.
However, I can't get the bookmarklet to work. Is it just me?
Todd - bookmarklet should be working now - there was a typo in the earlier version
I like this toolbar, it's very well done. I recently created a site called http://UserRule.com using the digg api, where the goal was to keep track of which stories you've read and dismissed so that you never have to view the same story twice.
When viewing the stories in your queue it's similar to the digg bar, although finding stories to add to your queue is quite a bit different than digg.com. In that way UserRule is pretty cool because you can view stories from specific domains, and also blacklist domains you never want to see stories from.
I hope they add some of the digg bar features to their api so that sites like UserRule can take advantage of them and become just as friendly to work with.
Interesting, but certainly raises the question of whether they will allow the bar to be indexed by google. Imagine tons of results coming up with the google bar instead of the actual site.
If digg decides to make all urls on the frontpage go through this bar, that's pretty much what would happen. Also if a link gets removed it'll make it harder to find since cached copies would rely on digg to serve the site via the frame used in the digg bar.
The random feature is very cool but the bar makes my FireFox freeze.
works for me dude!
RT
www.anonymity.us.tc
I've written an Adobe AIR application which accesses the open APIs of various URL shortening services (such as Snurl, TinyURL, Bitly, and more) to create short URLs directly from your desktop. Check it out:
http://www.andymatthews.net/code/shrinkadoo/
I'll be adding support for DIGG short URLs tonight.
Digg has a bookmarklet too, and it properly escapes URLs: http://digg.com/tools/diggbar
Horrible idea, major problems for webmasters in terms of seo and usability. Digg is getting really greedy with this latest addition.
If you click internal links the top url stays the same.
People will share the digg links instead of the real url's causing seo problems and some visitors clicking to digg instead of browsing other content on the site.
Works like a charm and helps us as a startup to easier share and promote our content. If they would only had a shorter domain like one of these http://tr.im/i3um ;)
I bet somebody sues Digg for placing the Digg Bar over their web page. I can't wait to see how that turns out.
I now like Digg more than before. Also love their new Digg Bar and way it works! Good work indeed!
This is really a brilliant move on Digg's part. Once they get a nice foothold on the micro-blogging services they can use the data (re-tweet count, etc) to factor in to the order of the stories and determine which ones will show up on the home page, how long they stay there, etc. Very cool!
Problem I've found using the digg bar as a way to also add to twitter is, it doesn't pick up the title of the page in the same way that twit this does. Needs improving
http://twiggit.org/ is now using the DiggBar to link to articles in your tweets!
wow I am really proud and happy to know that digg has a bright future coming up !
I think it's about time they did this, really!
I have to admit that this was so good that I tried to join Digg. But they must be full and used up. When I try to join or even send a complaint or ask for tech help, their form asks for a Kapcha that does not exit on the form. So I am assuming they have enough members. Am I correct?
Why did they think this was a good idea? It's like a took a step back into the 90's, hunting through directories looking for websites only to be harassed by headers that attempt to attach to every page you visit. The entire idea of a shorter URL is ridiculous, I'm just going to copy and paste it anyways.
Great post, the toolbar looks cool. Seem like a stumbleupon type of deal, good move for digg, all they need to do now is speed up their site and they'll be fine, nice blog btw ;-)
Terrance Charles
www.thesimplecodemanuscript.com
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The Digg bar is a fantastic addition to the Digg toolbox - I have taken the Digg bar one step further by adding the Digg bar to my toolbar - this might seem a strange thing to do.. a 'toolbar' within a toolbar - but my toolbar has a huge number of social networking/bookmarking tools available.. as well as many other tools!
You can read more about the Digg bar on my blog here: http://streaminginternetradiotoolbar.blogspot.com/2009/04/digg-bar-now-available.html
I think it's about time they did this, really!
Wow I am really proud ..
Why did they think this was a good idea? It's like a took a step back into the 90's, hunting through directories looking for websites şarkı dinle only to be harassed by headers that attempt to attach to every page you visit. The entire idea of a shorter URL is ridiculous, I'm just going to copy and paste it anyways. şarkılar
I've got to agree that it was about time they launched this toolbar ... other than that, I can honestly say that at certain times it's quite annoying.
I don't like the shitty looking bar on the top~
I hate that digg bar x( I wish they never have implemented it !
I don't like the shitty looking bar on the top
just started using digg and i got to say its very powerful and google loves it :)