Yesterday, while he was visiting his father and working beside a Colorado stream, Kevin Rose sent out a seemingly bland, lazy Sunday Tweet:
Working on @digg stuff while relaxing with my dad in evergreen, co. Home tomorrow #lifeisgood http://twitpic.com/1ofwqh
But the payload of that Tweet, a link to picture showing a glimpse of Rose’s computer screen, is much more interesting. The laptop is angled, but if you squint through the glare you can spot some features of what may be the long-awaited new Digg design. I’ve blown up the photo above and annotated it. The image is clearly different than the one on the new Digg sign-up page.
I was able to spot at least three new features. The first one that struck me is that each item now has two icons: the familiar Digg counter and a second social icon which looks like a Digg avatar. The second is that underneath the headline and action links, there is a third line with what appears to be a realtime status update, perhaps a Tweet, about that story. And third, the page Rose is on is a personalized tab along with what looks like a list of personalized topics along the left-hand column. Can you find any more new features in the pic? You can see the original and a bigger annotation-free blow-up below (along with a screenshot of what Digg looks like today, for comparison purposes).
Of course, this could just be a customized view that Rose uses for himself or maybe he is testing out new features which may or may not make it into the final design. But Rose keeps hinting that the new design is around the corner. Rose recently took over as CEO of Digg from his longtime business spartner Jay Adelson left, and cut 10 percent of Digg’s staff. Rose has a lot riding on this redesign. Hopefully, there is a lot more than what we see here. Our advice to Rose: don’t listen to Digg’s hardcore users and go with your gut instead.
Update: A somewhat clearer picture has emerged (courtesy of X64bit).
