A lot of people have been asking us to make it simpler to add Digg content to their sites while giving them lots of options for customization. Today we released Digg Widgets, built off of our API, which provides much more control than the current Add Digg functionality. It’s a great example of what you can build from the API but we saved you the work of having to do it yourself.

The first difference you’ll notice are the display themes, with lots of control over how your widget looks. You can customize everything from the background color to borders, titles, link color, and more. New display options include the option to display Digg counts next to each story. In addition to newly popular stories, we also now include Top 10 lists as well as the ability to filter content from a specific domain, so you can keep up with the most recent popular content from your favorite sites. If you’re a content publisher, you can now easily display a widget filtered just for content from your site.

Digg Widgets replaces the old method of including a list of Digg stories on your site, which a lot of you were using. No need to worry – the old way will continue to work. If you use the older method of including news on your site, try out the new features and take more control of what to include and how it’s displayed.

Also included in this release are several updates to the Arc visualization in Digg Labs, which we made with the help of Stamen Design and Intel after getting a ton of great feedback from the Digg community. There are a bunch of great improvements:

• It’s much easier now to see who has Dugg the stories displayed in the Arc
• We included a speed control, which a lot of you asked for
• Improved interaction – easier to go from the outside of the arc to the center
• Better control over the arc mousovers (to prevent accidental mouseovers)