Introducing: Brian Shaler's DiggTaggr (Alpha)
Top: example of a normal digg headline.
Bottom: Brian Shaler's DiggTaggr Tool displaying a list of relevant stories
[ Skip to download/installation section ]
Let's talk about usability and optimizing content discovery for Digg.com users (or skip ahead to download). First, we should discuss the pros and cons of the most common ways users find content on Digg.
- Front Page
- Digg Upcoming & Digg Cloud
- Digg Spy, Stack, & Swarm
- Friends' Recent Activity
- Search
Front Page (+RSS)
The Digg front page generally has the highest quality and most interesting stories; it is likely the most used method for finding content. However, there are a few drawbacks. The quantity of stories available to users is very limited, especially if drilled down into a specific category. Although the stories may be considered interesting to the masses, there is little accommodation for people of less common interests.
Digg Cloud
There is definitely no restriction on the types of stories you will find, because ALL stories are visible here. You gain availability at the expense of usability. There are countless spam/junk stories getting pumped into Digg, and every one of them will show up in Cloud. The content is almost completely random, as the most filtering you can do is by category/subcategory, rather than by subject matter.
Digg Spy, Stack, & Swarm
These tools all give active views of what's being Dugg. Trying to find stories that appeal to you using these tools is a hit-or-miss process. The more active a story is, the more prominently it is displayed in each of these tools. Directing your attention to active stories is great, but that is unrelated to whether or not the story will appeal to you.
Friends' Recent Activity
In theory, this should be the best way to find stories that interest you. It's simple. You just add people to your friends list that share interests with you. Unfortunately, in practice, this method is A.) too time consuming (finding like-minded members to add) and B.) not very reliable for stories that will interest you. You can't find people who fit you exactly, and each individual you add to your friends list that doesn't match you perfectly copmromises the quality of the content.
Search
Many people complain about Digg's underwhelming search functionality. True, it's not great, but it is still the most effective way of finding more stories on a very specific topic.
Where DiggTaggr Fits in with these Tools
DiggTaggr is not intended to replace or compete with any of these existing content discovery systems. It instead complements them, adding to their effectiveness. Each of the methods above directs users to the detail view of every story they display. On that page, DiggTaggr can help recommend where to go next if you want to continue reading about that topic or similar topics.
Requirements
Because this feature utilizes the Greasemonkey extension for Firefox, users must have Firefox and Greasemonkey installed.
Download/Installation
If you don't have Firefox installed, you can install it now.
Click here to download Firefox
If you have Firefox installed, but don't have the Greasemonkey extension installed, you can install it now.
Click here to download Greasemonkey
Once you have Firefox and Greasemonkey installed, you can install the DiggTaggr user script by navigating to: http://brian.shaler.name/diggtaggr/diggtaggr.user.js
Feedback
Please let me know what you think! Your feedback is what motivates me to continue developing stuff for the community. I would really like to hear from you if DiggTaggr changed the way you use Digg!
Email: brian@shaler.name
Feel free to make recommendations, but keep in mind that DiggTaggr is very fresh and most of the original intended features have not yet been implemented.
This site is powered by Brian's keyboard.