Digg is an amazing site that has come a very long way in its short time on the web. Features are continuously added and generally improve the usability of the site (comments section debacle aside). I love Digg and couldn’t imagine the web without it now but I’ve come up with a list of nine suggestions that I think would improve the site immensely for me personally. I will preface this by saying that I may have just not found some of these on the site so if you know of a way of accomplishing what I have here, please let me know. I’d also love to hear from my readers if you have an idea for a Digg improvement–just drop a note in my comments section!

Add Strangers To “Who Dugg This?”

I like to add people that Digg my stories as friends on the site. It is nice to see the same names of people enjoying the articles that I enjoy. This is often quite challenging though because the section under “Who Dugg This” only includes all diggers and my friends. I’d like to see a third tab added that shows everyone that dugg the article that isn’t my friend.

RSS Style Reading To Let Me Know When I’ve Already Seen Something

I will admit that implementing this feature might be tougher than it sounds or more work than it is worth but I’ll throw it out there anyhow. I don’t know how others view Digg but I load up the site and start skimming through the articles. If something looks interesting, I will open the link in a new tab by right clicking on the number of comments. That way, I have the comments section still open and I can then open the actual article in its own tab. When all is said and done, I have Digg in a tab, the comments for that particular article in a tab and then the article itself in a tab. This way, I can digg the article if I do like it or leave a comment. In the mornings when I load Digg, I scroll through a few pages to see all of the stories since yesterday and then stop once I hit one that looks familiar. I’d love for Digg to implement a line or some way of letting me know that I have gotten to this point before. That way, I can easily see which stories I haven’t yet seen and only focus my attention on those.I do realize I could use the Digg RSS Feed for this purpose, but unless I’m wrong, I don’t see the comments, number of Diggs and other details.

Add Grouping To My Friends

I’m sure my friend list is very similar to everyone else’s in that I have people I actually know, people I’ve grown to know through their writings online and then a large group of people that I don’t know at all but have added me as a friend on the site. I’d love to be able to group these people into categories so I could see just shouts from people I know in person for example. Or, I could pull up just the articles submitted by the authors I really like. Think of it as a hierarchy of friends with simple, intuitive categories that I can define.

Let Me Delete All Of My Shouts At Once!

As I mentioned before, I add people that Digg my articles as friends. This has made my friends list build over time to a decent size and my number of shouts every day is quite large as a result. I read all of my shouts but I have to click the “Delete” button and then “Ok” in the resulting dialog box for each one. I would really prefer to read all my shouts and then click a simple link to Delete All Shouts in one click.

Private Messaging Would Be Great!

A few days ago, someone on my friend’s list submitted a story in the morning. By mid-afternoon, that friend had sent me five shouts on the same story. It was a bit of shout spam and I wanted to kindly ask them not to send multiple shouts on the same article. I know that I could shout back to them but it would look like I’m scolding them in public. Instead, I’d rather send them a private message to keep it between just us.

Silence A Friend

I saw someone else suggest this recently and I definitely agree that this would be a great benefit to Digg’s functionality. I’d love to be able to just ignore a friend’s shouts if they routinely send spam. I could unfriend them but if they are someone that diggs my work, I’d hate to lose them altogether. Call it selfish, but if I could just silence them I think we would both win.

Create A Banned Sites List

I love how I can remove entire categories by unchecking them in my viewing settings. I’d like to expand on this filter and create a list of sites I don’t like. If someone dislikes my site for example, it would be great if they could simply ban dailybrilliance.com so any submissions from my site do not get displayed when they are browsing Digg.

Notify Site Owners When A Story Is Submitted And Again When Popular

It is fantastic that I can receive an email when my story is made popular. I like to start monitoring the traffic if I’m near a computer and watch the Digg effect in action. What if I don’t submit the story though? The good folks at Digg could add a section to my profile called “Sites I Own” and allow me to list my sites there. Then, I could receive a notification telling me that someone submitted a story from my site. Furthermore, I could elect to receive an email if that submission became popular.

It May Be Time For A Server Upgrade

I’m not quite sure why but Digg has seemed a little slow for me this past month from both my home and work computers. By no means is the slow down unbearable but I can definitely notice it. Do any of you see this or am I just imagining things? At any rate, it may be time to upgrade the servers.

Any Other Tips For Our Friends At Digg?

In no way am I complaining about Digg or trying to take any stab at the site–well, maybe a tad on the last suggestion. In fact, I truly love the concept and I think the designers have implemented their ideas incredibly well. I am a big believer that there is always room for improvement so I’ve posted my nine ideas on how I think Digg could make the experience even better for all of us. Do you have ideas as well? If so, leave a comment and let’s give a little back to the Digg founders!Like This Post? Digg It!