Jeremiah Hoyet

I think it’s fun when someone gives Propeller free press over such trivial things. Oh, like a fuzzy, poor quality, camera-captured screenshot?

Via: ValleyWag

Digg announced today that they will roll out the long awaited “Images” category that so many have been waiting to see released. Along with the new category, they are also adding some image-related tweaks to the site. Those changes are detailed in the blog post:

• New Universal Taxonomy
  Now you can submit news, images, or videos to any category on Digg! Categories will be consistent across the board, which means you can view all media types in a given topic, or view one media type at a time (e.g., only images under the “sports” category). We’re also excited to support the launch with new categories. “Offbeat” will be its own category, with new topics, and we’re adding a whole new “Lifestyle” category with topics like Autos, Food & Drink, and Travel. As always, if you don’t want to see a particular topic or media type on Digg, you can click the customize button in the navigation to filter your view.
• New Images Crawler
  Submitting images to Digg is basically the same as submitting news and videos, with a few notable differences. When you submit a link to a web page containing multiple images, Digg will crawl the page and present up to ten image thumbnails from that page for you to choose the one you want. We’ve also added this technology to news submissions.
• Sorting and Duplicate Image Detection
  We’ve added a new sort to the images section called “mosaic” view – it’s great for browsing image thumbnails. To help prevent people from submitting duplicate images, we’ve added image recognition technology from Idée Inc.

Along with the new features, Digg has teamed up with Photobucket to gather content for the new category. Photobucket will add “Digg This” buttons to their photos shortly after the channel goes live tonight.

I can only speculate, having not followed the development of this long awaited feature, that the long wait is attributed to this partnership between Digg and Photobucket. Having two features on two sites as large as Digg & Photobucket roll out around the same time can be a cumbersome process, either of the two could cause delays for the other.

Read: Images and new categories launch tonight

While surfing through Digg or Propeller, I started noticing something. The topics I am truly interested in just don’t jump out at me. Neither of the sites cater to specific set of topics I would like to view.
Content I Care About: When I’m browsing through Propeller, I seldom stop to read political news thrououghly. I also seldom find myself reading a travel blog and not being bored. I mainly enjoy reading technology-related news and the occasional humor submission. So, why clutter MY front page with Politics? Why even show me submissions categorized under the “Travel” section? Let me choose the sections I want to see.

You may be thinking “Well, Digg does this already,” and you’re right, but ideally I’d like it taken a step further. Really narrow down what the reader is actually interested in, and cut out the excess from their experience. If I’m generally interested in technology, but not so interested in what latests iPhone hacks there are, then I don’t want to see it. Got a story about how much of a performance increase the G92 GPUs bring about, I want it to be emphisized.

This may be asking a lot, but think about it from a readers stand point. I want to get to the site and see what interests me, while at the same time getting the best from those who are submitting and voting on the same things I am. Sifting through pages and pages of random things may be fun to some people, but not to everyone.

Propeller is close to having this functionality with it’s tagging system. For example, I have created a “Tag Channel” of my own by submitting a good number of hardware-related news under the tag “Hardware Review“. The only issue is that I can’t select tags I would prefer to see over others. Think of it like, a Linux fan excludes all submissions tagged “Apple” or “Windows”, because it doesn’t interest them.

Now that I’m done rambling. Not all is bad, but I think the reader’s experience and ability to use the site to read what they want could use some work, that’s all.