Digg profile redesign: See who your REAL friends are

Digg launched the new profile looks yesterday and some big changes have been implemented. New features like multiple profile pictures, information about your personal interests, links to your own various websites, the possibility to add a bio and an IM-like system called ‘shouts’ are live already. More features, including Digg Images, Digg Suggest and Digg Alerts, will be launched later this year. With changes like this, it’s not surprising to see some members unhappy with “this new Facebook/ MySpace crap”, while others are very pleased to see Digg “finally delivering a social promise”.

A big change from an SEO point of view, is the ‘submitted by friends’ section. Where it used to be very easy to please your Digg friends by digging the stuff they submitted, this has changed now. The mass digg option, -digging several articles within a few seconds- has been replaced by a two click system. Like with articles from the ‘Top 10 in All Topics’, which is displayed on the right side of the front page, it’s not possible anymore to digg articles without having to click at least 1 time first.

While some SEOs will see this as a bad thing, it eventually will be improving the quality of Digg. It used to be possible to get a front page listing mainly because of your friends clicking on one of your catchy titles. To test this, I submitted a five year old article with an off-topic title once. The article got buried, but only after it managed to receive 61 diggs.

With this new system, you’ll have to increase your link baiting efforts even more. Not only by increasing the quality of your articles (this profile change will result in more insights in what kind of articles really are diggworthy), but also by maintaining your friend network more intensively. Where it used to be possible to build a massive network of Digg friends while only spending 10 minutes a day on Digg, you’ll have be networking more thoroughly from now on.

You’ll also able to see who your real Digg friends are in the next few weeks. Those who are still digging your articles, even after they have to make a few more clicks to do this, probably are willing to invest time in building a high quality, two way Digg network. Those who stop digging almost every article you submit, probably weren’t that interested in your contributions. This either means that your submissions weren’t that good, or that he/ she wasn’t such a good friend after all.