ReadWriteWeb

The new version of Digg has changed the playing field for two of its biggest constituents: power users and publishers. We discuss this with a long-time Digg power user.

The latest version of social news site Digg is currently in restricted beta, with an additional 20,000 users added at the beginning of July. The new version adds the ability to "follow" people or publishers via a feature called "My News." This will be the default Digg home page, and it's prompted many to compare the new Digg to Twitter and Facebook. Another big change is that publishers may now automatically submit their content. This changes the game for both power users and publishers, because previously the secret to getting onto the Digg front page was for a power user to submit the story. That's no longer the case.

After the success of last week's ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit in Mountain View, California, we are back with this week's best startup advice in the ReadWriteStart Weekly Wrapup. This week we discuss VCs and NDAs, balancing features between power users and newbies, geeky startups and how one startup shrugged off a lack of funding and made the money themselves. We also have stories about Diaspora, the open source Facebook alternative, as well as an interview with Gary Vaynerchuk about the bright future of geolocation.

For many successful startups, there exists a point where their product is popular enough to grow beyond the minimum viable product, but is yet to be discovered by millions more that may be turned off if the service is too complicated. Internet startups need to find a balance between keeping the power users interested, while not overwhelming the newbies. According to Spark Capital's Bijan Sabet, Tumblr, a rapidly growing micro-blogging service, is one company doing a beautiful job of finding this balance by turning the "less is more" mantra into "less and more."

Social media, it's all about the democratization of communication and empowering new voices - right? A few years into the new media revolution, reality is looking a little more complicated than that theory would suggest.

The wild garden of services growing from the read/write soil of the new web struggles each time a new app is launched and looks more like a ghost town than a place to enjoy the network effect of the crowd. How can new services ramp up social connections quickly? Recommending "friendship" with active early adopters is one strategy being explored by a number of sites. The end result can be a lopsided environment where a handful of winners dominate the collective mindshare - again.