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April 12, 2009
Why do i think diggbar is not ready yet
Well, it's actually a very good idea... for them!
DiggBar is taking the interweb really fast but i'm worried about it's implementation.
My opinion is that Kevin Rose (digg's founder and site architect) needs to get back to the whiteboard asap or this could be the smth that may speak bad about it's company. This is why.
I'm a regular user of digg even if i don't dugg that frequently. I love the business stuff Kevin Rose does (digg, revision3, the investment in omgpop, etc. - except pownce which i always thought was a bad idea -).
There are a couple of blog entries at digg explaining that they have consulted with google, ask.com, between others and that this bar doesn't harm SEO on webpages.
The problem here is the user experience.
1) Go to digg.com and follow a youtube entry, click on a related video on the related video panel on the right side of youtube's website and then try to share that new video url with a friend. You can't! Since the diggbar maintains it's shortened url on top it's impossible for you to share the result of a link inside a diggbar url. This is also a bad idea for users who bookmark a lot and use urls to give an idea of the content.
2) Diggbar doesn't discriminate content. This means that it's possible to "diggbar" a porn site and share it. All together with digg's branding! Not good for ppl that doesn't know what is digg or diggbar!
3) Diggbar'ing url validations are not bullet proof. You could easily create an infinitive loop where diggbars could fill the entire screen without stop. It's not that difficult, think about it.
4) Diggbar is just a floating frame so it doesn't display perfectly on some browsers (have you tried following a diggbar link on a very small screen?). In safari 4 beta sometimes the rendering of it and the continuos scroll draw gray lines across the content website.
5) Diggbar as extra software on installers should be opt-in and not opt-out.
The funny thing is that some other ppl have thought on this before and they were guilty of web spamming but since digg is doing it everyone loves it.
Have you tried the digg firefox toolbar? It's pretty much the same except the diggbar has the url shortening thing and doesn't require installation.
Hope someone at digg to read this blog. I like the diggbar idea but there are a couple of things that doesn't convince me yet.
--fernando
