Digg went down shortly today and many have wondered what changes, if any, were released in the short time it was down.
One of the most obvious changes people will notice is the addition of a big “Check Spelling” button on the second page of the submission process.
Once you click the “check spelling” button a new window will pop up offering you the standard options to correct any possible errors in your text.
Make your changes and continue along with the process.
Another, not so obvious change, is that Digg no longer thinks your a “Zero” if no one has submitted your post to Digg. So if you have a plugin or use Digg’s button code on your site, in the past you would get a number “0” on the button indicating that no one had submitted this article to Digg and thus no votes have been counted.
As you will notice in the picture below this is no longer the case. Now Digg buttons show no number if they have not been submitted to Digg.
It’s a good thing that they lost the zero.
The future of Digg is an interesting question. Digg has developed a definite collective editorial voice: that’s a good thing, but it limits the appeal of Digg. If you can deal with endless top ten lists and a place where Ron Paul has 20 times as many friends of any mainstream Republican, Digg is great. People who don’t dig that (probably most people) are going to spend time with another community — in the big picture that’s OK, but Digg would certainly like to get bigger and maximize it’s network effects/first mover advantage…
Efforts to “democratize” Digg and take power away from the cabals that rule the front page might broaden the appeal of Digg, but might also wreck what makes it so special.