Filed under: Internet, Web services, Social Software, web 2.0
Digg's new Diggbar will destroy other short url services
Apart from making it easy to submit items to Digg, the toolbar also integrates with Facebook and Twitter and can send links via email. There's nothing to install, just a simple bookmarklet that should work with any web browser. Click it and the page reloads with the Diggbar perched on top, ready to submit the page to Digg and share stats on previously dugg items.
A short URL is automatically created for the page, and the Diggbar has one big advantage over other competitors like TinyURL, bit.ly, and Is.gd: name recognition. There's no doubt that the service will benefit from not only from Digg's popluarity, but also from Kevin Rose's massive Twitter following and general "star power."
No need to visit Digg to view comments, either. Just click the button and they'll appear between the bar and the page itself. The bar also includes buttons to visit a random site or check out related Digg submissions.
As if that weren't enough, Thwirl integration is coming. Once it's live, users will be able to use Digg as their default short URL service. Since the features have been made available via Digg's API, developers of other apps can start taking advantage of it as well.
Maybe you don't think Diggbar will destroy the others, but there's no denying it'll make some serious noise.
[via Digg Blog]

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
DaMan09 said 5:16PM on 4-02-2009
http://digg.com/d1no6I
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Johnny said 11:05AM on 4-03-2009
But will there be a feature to not have the bar show up and just redirect directly to the url?
Sam Brentnall said 5:26PM on 4-02-2009
This is ace, I've always loved Digg!
by the way, i digged this!
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archer said 6:03PM on 4-02-2009
has some cool features, but its "short urls" are longer, not customizable, or savable. hardly a tinyurl killer.
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Lee Mathews said 6:04PM on 4-02-2009
Er...they're shorter than TinyURL. A better example may be is.gd, but neither of those services has anywhere near the overall clout that Digg does.
John Datserakis said 12:37AM on 4-03-2009
I just wanted to say that don't know whether it's cause I just smoked or not, but I really thought this article was well written.
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azwan said 5:51AM on 4-03-2009
Never thought it would be something like this. genius!
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Jesse Stone said 7:37AM on 4-03-2009
Yeah but Google still kicks them to the Curb. Google rules ALL.
RT
www.anon-tools.cz.tc
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lolwut? said 9:58AM on 4-03-2009
Am I the only one who finds scrolling awfully slow w/ DiggBar on? I'm using FF3.1b3 btw :(
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chocolatelove said 1:49PM on 4-03-2009
IMO, the DiggBar sucks on several levels:
1. This is a re-hash of html frames. Are we back in 1998? Didn't we already agree that framing content sucks? And that framing another website's content really sucks?
2. It looks to be doing stuff in the background that takes system resources. I'm noticing increased processor use by Firefox when on a page w/ the DiggBar.
3. It is content theft. The DiggBar frames content and obscures the original URL.
Again, these are my opinions. Yours may vary.
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Adn Elric said 10:21PM on 4-03-2009
@DaMan09 OMG whats with the DiggBar "tv-in-front-of-camera" effect. Hope they fix that one.
@chocolatelove #3 I also tought of that, but the big cross on the right seem to be fair enough for me. I like the feeling of not leaving Digg while browsing.
Does anyone have this series of weird one pixel horizontal lines while scrolling down a page on Chrome?
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