The New Digg: My Thoughts
Last week, after a month of testing with a select group of beta users, the new Digg went live to everyone . Based on the launch it looks like they should have kept the site in private beta a bit longer. There was quite a bit of hype around this launch and as soon as users found out it was live they rushed to Digg.com to check it out. Ironically this influx of visitors caused Digg to suffer the Digg Effect and crash... frequently. Luckily they had a fun (at first) Oregon Trail error page to keep us entertained.
Being a developer myself I have to look past the errors on launch day, since we've all had product releases that didn't go exactly as planned. Even though a week later I'm still getting the occasional error (I'm looking at the "broken axle" screen now as I opened the site to take a screen shot), I'll leave that out of my review. They seemed to have rushed this product out the door and I'm sure they have their reasons for it.
Design
Although the entire Digg community seems to hate the design - calling it a Facebook ripoff - I kind of like it. Whenever a site changes its design their users revolt. We all remember the Facebook redesigns that caused "Bring back the old Facebook" groups of 1M+ users, and the News Feed that Mark Zuckerberg actually had to apologize for. Personally, for each of those Facebook releases, I was very excited and immediately saw the value they added to the Facebook experience. The News Feed is what keeps people coming back to Facebook daily, hourly, or even every couple of minutes, and this is what makes Facebook the monster that it is today. Digg's "My News" will do the same for them, once users get used to the change and stop bitching. I have actually found it pretty useful and have discovered stories, photos and videos I wouldn't have before.
Functionality
Digg has released come cool features in Digg 4, and I'm sure there are more to come. My favorite one is the "Import Feeds" which allows you to submit your RSS feed to Digg and have your content automatically submitted as you post it. Again, the Digg community hates this because they feel that Digg is about discovering news, but I feel this just makes discovering that news easier. Instead of going to a number of different sites everyday, or hoping interesting stories get enough Diggs to make the front page, I can now browse all content from sites that I like and choose to follow.
I also like the ability to follow individual users and have their submissions fed to the "My News" page. I'm always interested to see what my friends are reading and this makes following them much easier. I think the social aspect is one thing Digg was always missing and fell they really brought that to the site nicely with this release.
They also got rid of the Digg Toolbar, which makes me very happy. That toolbar was useless, broke some sites, and was just an overall awful idea. I'm very glad to see it gone!
Wishlist
Like everything else in the world Digg 4 is not perfect. There are a few things they seem to be missing and I'm sure they're working on them as I write this. They already made it so you could set "Top News" to your default page when visiting the site and have more updates on the way.
In case you're listening Digg, here's what I would like to see:
- Sub-categories brought back
- Upcoming stories
- A more stable site
- The bury button brought back
Overall I think the new Digg is going in a great direction and I can't wait to see where it's at in a couple of months. I think once all the bugs are out and the users accept it the new Digg will be a huge success.
What do you think of the new Digg? Is there anything you would like to see added or removed? Let me know in the comments.
What I’ve Been Up To
As I'm sure you've noticed I haven't posted in a long time and I wanted to give you an update about what I've been up to. It's been a pretty busy summer for me and some really cool things are going on and coming up.
First, I love the iPhone 4. It was definitely worth the nine hour wait in line at my local Apple Store. With that being said, I did smash the screen last weekend. For those of you who know me I'm sure this really isn't very surprising. I've had 12 iPhones and seem to break them almost immediately after buying them. Luckily this time it's still usable (minus the occasional shards of glass in my fingers) and I'm going to try and go in and beg for a replacement. It's worked before!
Second, I am with a new company, StudentCity. Here's a little information about them:
At StudentCity, we're dedicated to helping you celebrate your college years through travel. In fact, it's all we do. We specialize in providing you with The Ultimate Spring Break Experience with all-inclusive packages, ultra-exclusive incentives, flexible payment plans and more at the lowest prices. And we're with you every step of the way. From the planning stage to the travel stage and beyond, our team of travel professionals will do everything we can to ensure you have an unforgettable Spring Break vacation experience.
It's a very cool company to work for. It's also a bit of a change for me too. Instead of doing development I am doing internet marketing. As much as I love coding it's a nice change to get back to marketing. Back when I first got involved with the web over 11 years ago I was in marketing, and it's very cool to be back. If you're a student looking to go on spring break be sure to check us out!
Third, I am working on a very cool side project that I hope to be launching soon! It's currently in the stealth stage so I can't tell you too much but development is moving very quickly so I'll have more information soon.
So that's what I've been up to these last couple of months. What have you been up to? Anything fun? Exciting? Let me know in the comments!
iPhone 4
As I'm sure you know the new iPhone 4 comes out tomorrow morning and the response so far has been amazing. Pre-orders were a disaster with servers crashing everywhere and canceled orders. It's going to be tough to get your hands on this one early.
I'm pretty excited about this launch for a few reasons. Mainly the faster performance and better battery life will make this phone a true beast. But also the HD video capabilities could prove to be a great tool for Zipvo (my real estate video startup) users. The retina display (aka better screen resolution) also sounds pretty cool.
Since I missed pre-orders and you couldn't get a white one by pre-ordering anyway, I'm going to the Apple store with a friend at 3 AM tomorrow morning. We're going to wait in line and try to track down the illusive white iPhone and hang out with other Apple enthusiasts.
I'll be posting updates throughout the day to my Facebook and Twitter accounts so keep an eye out! I'll also be posting a follow up / review here on JamesShiner.com after I get my new iPhone.
If you're heading to the Apple Store at the Northshore Mall in Peabody, MA I'll see you there!
Interesting Twitter Facts & Figures
Twitter's growth has always amazed me. It seems like overnight everyone knew what Twitter was and most of them were tweeting. Truth is Twitter has been around since 2006 and didn't really see growth until the South by Southwest festival in 2007 where they won the Web Award. Before that they had only 100 user accounts. After winning the award by that December more than 500,000 Tweets are being posted quarterly.
There are a number of amazing facts like this contained in the infographic below.
Twitters New Embeddable Tweets
Have you tried out Twitters new embeddable tweets yet? I'm not very impressed with it. The system seems like it's a bit buggy and I'm not sure picking up some of the styling from the site it's being embedded on is the best idea. As you can see in my comparison below it doesn't look too great. Have you tried it out yet? How have your experiences been?
Twitters Embeddable Tweet
Why Your Company Should Use Social Media
Statistics like the ones in the video below always amaze me. I've been a proponent for social media since it first hit the web. I've been telling clients for years that they need to get their business on Facebook and Twitter, that they need a blog, and that engaging with customers on these platforms will increase their business.
On of the biggest concerns newcomers to Facebook have is that it's just kids posting photos from parties. My response to them is supported by this video: The fastest growing segment on Facebook is women age 55-65. I knew this was true because both my mother and my grandmother are on Facebook and log on daily. I've gotten wall posts from my grandmother and been tagged in photos by my mother. It's a great way to stay in touch with my family that I don't get to see that often.
For businesses it's really a no brainer as to why they should be on Facebook. With Facebook surpassing Google for weekly traffic in the US, it's now more important to get your ranking on Facebook up than it is on Google. There are over 200,000,000 blogs on the Internet today and 25% of search results for the worlds top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content. With 78% of consumers trusting peer recommendations why wouldn't you want a solid social media presence?
It's time to stop wasting your money on ads and create a social media presence for your company. Only 14% trust advertisements and only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI. Over 90% of people - including myself - skip TV ads with TiVo/DVR!
Watch the video below and think about what you need to do to enhance your presence on the web.
Hello World
Hello and welcome to the official website of James Shiner! I've been meaning to get my personal site together for a while now and finally found some time to do it. My recent unemployment has opened up time for a lot of things and I'm very excited to share them with you!
First: I am no longer with Zaang. Without getting into too much detail let's just say I was shocked when I learned that I was no longer needed there. Sometimes building a company, team, office, idea, website, being the first employee, working for free for a couple months and working a minimum of 60 hours per week is not enough.
I learned a lesson though: Do not work FOR others, work WITH others! When you work for others you are not appreciated. You're expected to work work work with no appreciation or rewards when you put in 100 hour weeks or work 36 hours straight. Up until Zaang I spent my entire life just rolling the dice, hoping for the best, and working my ass off to make sure the best happened. I thought Zaang was a great idea with a great team, but I was fooled. That was my first "real job" and let me tell you, it will most certainly be my last.
This brings me to my next announcement: I am back at Zipvo as Lead Developer. This is very exciting as Zipvo is a company I founded (along with Greg Afarian) and it has great potential to revolutionize the real estate industry. Although I had stepped down as Lead Developer I was still actively involved as an adviser and I can tell you that we have some very exciting new features coming out in the near future. Stay tuned for more on that!
As for my other announcements, those are top secret right now! As they become available I will be sure to share them with you. I can tell you this much though: They're very cool and I know you will love them. In fact, if you can guess what projects I will be releasing next I will give you a prize! I don't know what the prize will be yet but it will be awesome. Leave your guesses in the comments.
That's it for now. As for this site, JamesShiner.com, I will be writing about all types of topics here. I'll cover social media, technology, programming, random things I see, hate, love, and basically anything else that comes to mind. So stay tuned!
My name is James Shiner and I'm a PHP developer, internet marketer and serial entrepreneur who also loves speaking, teaching, writing and consulting. I have a passion for social media and basically anything related to the Internet and technology.
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