Since we launched the DiggBar, we’ve received valuable feedback from the Digg community, publishers, SEO industry experts and Google. We believe that the DiggBar provides a more seamless way to discover and share content on Digg.  Since the launch a little more than a week ago, roughly 45% of all Digging activity is now happening on the Diggbar and over 25% of all DiggBar users are discovering new content they otherwise wouldn’t have by viewing related stories and content from the same source. We’ve also seen a 10% increase in users sharing short-URLs across Twitter, Facebook, email and other places.

Along with all of the positive feedback and results, we’ve also heard your concerns that we take seriously and want to address quickly. We are rolling out a few key changes over the next week or so.

1. New treatment to the behavior of Digg short URLs. All anonymous users, on or off Digg will be taken directly to the publishers content via a permanent redirect (301), no toolbar, straight to the site. Logged in users that have not opted out will continue to see the DiggBar (200). These changes ensure that content providers receive full search engine ‘juice’ or credit for all links on and off Digg. They also ensure that Digg short URLs won’t appear in the indexes of any major search engines.

2. Because we want to ensure the best user experience, the DiggBar will soon only be shown to you when you are logged into Digg. While the vast majority of Digg users find the DiggBar valuable (only a very small number of users have disabled the feature or hit close with any frequency) we understand that many folks were confused when opting out. We want you to be able to have the option to permanently disable the DiggBar with ease. For registered Digg users receiving the bar, we are also making a few changes to make the process more obvious.

We’re working on these changes now and hope to push them live next week. In addition to immediate changes, we’re also continuing to explore better ways to integrate these tools into the browser as extensions.

As always, we’re continuing to take feedback and evolve the product, so don’t be surprised if you see additional enhancements and updates soon.

Thanks,
John

Hi all,

As most of you have noticed, we launched the DiggBar last week. This cool little feature streamlines your Digg experience by making it much easier to discover and share stories. You can now catch up on comments, related stories and additional source content while directly on the story (no more awkward toggling between Digg and the publisher site). It’s also easier to share stories with your friends on Facebook, Twitter and other great destinations on the interwebs with a shortened Digg URL.

The preliminary results have been exciting, and we continue to learn and make real-time updates to the DiggBar. We’ve seen a 20% lift in unique visitors and many content providers have experienced similar traffic bumps this past week. Digg continues to have a symbiotic relationship with content publishers, and we anticipate these ongoing improvements will only enhance publisher traffic as more people discover and share content on Digg.

Prior to launching the DiggBar, we reached out to Google and SEO experts to ensure we adhered to the leading best practices, as we framed and linked directly to source content via the DiggBar. This process involved gathering feedback from publishers to ensure the execution was as content-provider-friendly as possible. We took several steps to ensure that search engines continue to count the original source, versus registering the DiggBar as new content. We include only links to the source URLs on Digg pages to allow spiders to see the unmodified links to source sites. These links are overwritten to short URLs in JavaScript for users who have this preference.

We launched a few additional updates early this week to address some lingering concerns in the SEO and publishing communities around the infamous (and sometimes mysterious) search engine ‘juice’. We always represent the source URL as the preferred version of the URL to search engines and use the meta noindex tag to keep DiggBar pages out of search indexes. For those of you interested in the technical details, we also include link rel=”canonical” information to indicate that the original URL is the real (canonical) version. Additional URL properties, like PageRank and related signals, are transferred as well. This is recommended by Google, Ask.com, Microsoft and Yahoo!.

There’s also been some discussion about how traditional web analytics and panel based companies like Quantcast, Compete, Nielson and Comscore track shortened URLs. While we don’t claim to represent any specific methodology, we’ve reached out to Comscore and Nielson and they both confirmed that publisher traffic statistics won’t be impacted by the DiggBar implementation. Also, any quantitative tag employed by Quantcast, Compete and Comscore’s new hybrid methodology will also register the source as the page view.

As always, we continue to monitor ideas and suggestions, so please send them our way.

Thanks,
John

Calling all Diggers,

If you’re keen to work at Digg, here are 8 solid reasons to send us your resume right away:

8. You’ll Digg the DigDug
When Kurt isn’t solving complex infrastructure problems, he’s working on his DigDug high score. Think you can beat it? Think again. And while you’re thinking, how about sending in that resume?

7. Reduce your CO₂ footprint
Digg is bicycle friendly. So why not help save the planet while getting a workout? Digg is easily accessible from most of San Francisco or from the peninsula via Caltrain. What’s more, you can park your bike by your desk. So hop on your fixie, cruiser, or pink folding commuter with a basket and handlebar tassles and pedal on over to Digg.

6. You can snuggle up to the Digg pets
The Digg office has dogs aplenty and the occasional visit by “Pistol”, Digg’s very own guinea pig. Mmmmm, yummy little guinea pig. (Please don’t let on to Jim that we know Pistol is really a ferret.)

5. We’re located in San Francisco’s best neighborhood
Digg is located in San Francisco’s Potrero Hill neighborhood, boasting one of the best micro-climates in the city and lots of great places to eat and drink. Our local coffee shop, Farley’s, claims that it’s San Francisco’s best independent coffee house. Perhaps, but just don’t ask for a low fat latte – you won’t be welcomed back. :)

4. The fridge is always well-stocked
The Digg fridge is kept well-stocked at all times. And don’t forget Digg’s weekly “Wine Wednesdays.”

3. You’ll grow to love your MacBook Pro
Ah, the simple pleasure of an MacBook Pro and a 30″ monitor. Now if I could only figure out where my right mouse button has gone…

2. Who can’t use 20 PTO days?
At Digg you’ll enjoy 20 PTO days, 11 paid company holidays, a great health plan and a wellness (gym) reimbursement.

1. We Rock
The best reason to come and work at Digg: we rock. Or we try to. Don’t take my word for it – watch the video.

Digg is hiring in Development, R&D, QA, Product, and other areas. Check out the jobs page for details.

Thanks,
John