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Filed under: Internet, Social Software, web 2.0

Digg gets (more) social

DiggAccording to Business Week, Digg is launching a series of new social networking features today. But wait, isn't Digg already pretty social? Well yeah, the site leverages the power of communities by letting users submit and vote on news stories. And you can add "friends" to your profile to make it easier to see what other people are digging. But Digg is no MySpace/Facebook/Friendster.

First up, you'll be able to create a more complete personal profile. This will make it easier to find friends with similar tastes and interests. And you'll be able to send out story links to a limited group of friends rather than submitting them for review by the whole community.

In other words, if you've created a friend group filled with 19th century literature enthusiasts, you can share stories with your friends that would never make it to the front page of Digg.

By beefing up the personal profile page, Digg is also hoping to create a stronger user community base. You'll be able to post more information, links to profiles on other social networks, and multiple pictures. Apparently only about 15% to 20% of Digg's users actually have registered accounts, but that could change if users see more benefits to signing up than just the ability to submit links and comment on stories.

Digg hasn't officially announced the new features yet, but the existing Digg community is already having a thoughtful discussion in the comments of link to the Business Week article.

Filed under: Internet, Web services, web 2.0

eBay rolls out new shopping interface

eBay
eBay is getting a facelift. And while it's probably long overdue, we're not quite sure if its necessary.

While pretty much every new website you see these days use newfangled tools like AJAX and Flash animation to provide a desktop-like experience without the need to reload a webpage, a handful of popular sites have continued to get by with a web 1.0 interface. Craigslist and eBay are probably the first two that come to mind. After all, if you're shopping for used goods and bargains, a flashy website might just make you feel like the seller is trying to hide something.

That said, there's one thing that has always made items more attractive on eBay and Craigslist: pictures. And the new eBay design does a good job of highlighting pictures. You can still use the traditional list view with a tiny thumbnail. But for selected categories, you can also choose a "Picture Gallery" or "Snapshot View."

In Picture Gallery, you see large thumbnails with item information like title, price, and time remaining underneath. The Snapshot View shows you just a screen filled with images. Click on one and a window will pop up with a larger photo and more info about the item. For items where looks matter more than specs, shopping by photo could definitely be more productive than shopping by title.

The new views aren't available for all users for every category yet, but the company plans to roll them out for everyone by the end of the year. Some categories will also allow you to search by size, brand or color.

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