diggbar posts

Diggbar links now land on Digg instead of original sources

by Jay Hathaway Jul 19th 2009

Digg users recently noticed some interesting new behavior related to Digg's shortURL service, the Diggbar: instead of shortlinks going directly to their destinations, logged-out users who click them will now land on the corresponding Digg.com page. Sure, that's a lot of new traffic for Digg, but it's problematic because the change was never announced, and users who generate Digg links might not know where they're pointing.

Some folks are reasonably upset about the change, including Mashable's Pete Cashmore, who posted the headline, "Digg Just Hijacked Your Twitter Links." Mashable got confirmation from a Digg representative that the change wasn't a glitch, but was working as intended. After the Mashable post went up, though, Digg's Kevin Rose posted on Twitter that he had been on vacation and was not aware of the change. This story is still developing, but I suspect it will end with Digg going back to its old way of handling short links.

Tags: controversy, digg, diggbar, redirect, shorturl, tinyurl

Filed under: News, Web services, web 2.0

Digg gives in to DiggBar complaints

by Jay Hathaway Apr 15th 2009

After widespread complaints about Digg's new URL-shortener/toolbar, the DiggBar, Digg has responded and agreed to change the way the DiggBar behaves to address the problems people had with it. Number one on the list was the way the DiggBar framed other sites and used Digg's new URLs for everything, never revealing the URL of the actual destination site. Number 2 was the problem of DiggBar URLs turning up in search results and bookmarking services, sometimes ahead of the original domain. Creators of original content were understandably peeved.

Here's how Digg plans to address the problem, according a post from their official blog:

1. New treatment to the behavior of Digg short URLs. All anonymous users, on or off Digg will be taken directly to the publishers content via a permanent redirect (301), no toolbar, straight to the site. Logged in users that have not opted out will continue to see the DiggBar (200). These changes ensure that content providers receive full search engine 'juice' or credit for all links on and off Digg. They also ensure that Digg short URLs won't appear in the indexes of any major search engines.
2. Because we want to ensure the best user experience, the DiggBar will soon only be shown to you when you are logged into Digg. While the vast majority of Digg users find the DiggBar valuable (only a very small number of users have disabled the feature or hit close with any frequency) we understand that many folks were confused when opting out. We want you to be able to have the option to permanently disable the DiggBar with ease. For registered Digg users receiving the bar, we are also making a few changes to make the process more obvious.

Certainly, some people would rather the DiggBar disappear altogether, but these two moves make sure that people who don't like it can opt out, and people who do like it can opt in. More importantly, they make sure the DiggBar isn't some kind of uncouth relic from the late 90's. I'm not sure why they ever thought people would be ok with blatant framing of other websites in the first place, but at least they're fixing the problem now.

[via Daring Fireball]

Tags: complaints, digg, diggbar, url-shortener

Filed under: Internet, Social Software, Browsers

Hate Diggbar? Kill it with a userscript

by Lee Mathews Apr 8th 2009

There have been more than a few gripes about Digg's new iFrame toolbar. They're stealing content. It interferes with SEO. They're selling ads on other people's content.

If you share those gripes and would like to permanently bury the bar, there are already two userscripts available to do just that. Both DiggBar Killer and Anti Diggbar get the job done. While neither actually blocks the bar completely, both scripts will quickly redirect you to the unshortened, original URL of the item you want to view.

They'll get the job done for now, but it's probably safe to assume that some disgruntled coder is already working on a way to bypass the shortened Digg links completely and send you on your way completely Diggbar-free.

If you're a Digg member, you can also turn off the bar when opening links by changing a setting on your viewing preferences (pictured above).

Tags: digg, diggbar, greasemonkey, userscripts

Filed under: Internet, Web services, Social Software, web 2.0

Digg's new Diggbar will destroy other short url services

by Lee Mathews Apr 2nd 2009

Everyone knows about the power of Digg. We've seen it first hand many times here at DLS with waves of Digg faithful pouring in when a hot story hits the feed. Today, they've taken the gloves off and come out swinging at other short URL and social sharing services with the new Diggbar.

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]

Tags: bookmarklet, digg, diggbar, shortener, tinyurl, twhirl, url

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diggbar posts

Diggbar links now land on Digg instead of original sources

Digg gives in to DiggBar complaints

Hate Diggbar? Kill it with a userscript

Digg's new Diggbar will destroy other short url services

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