It's been about 3 years since I last relied on social news aggregation website Digg to provide my daily fix of news. I think it's been about 3 years. Hell, I can't recall the last time I navigated to the site.

Until today.

I heard Digg went through a major version change, so like any web developer/news addict, I couldn't resist checking it out.

I'll sum up my experience with Digg 4.0 as follows...

I was greeted by a front page filled with two day old news and what appeared to be service and product solicitations ads masquerading as news. My first thought was, "Seems the spammers figured out how to game the new version already". Meh.

I decided to login. After clicking the login link, I sat and watched a "loading" animation for about 2 minutes. Performance seemed to be an issue. I fucked up logging in for about 3 minutes after that because I couldn't remember my username. After finally getting it right and successfully logging in, I was presented with a page that recommended I add some sites or people or some shit to "watch" in order to customize my user experience. Well, fuck that, I can do that later. So I clicked "next" and was brought to a page where I could see what my Facebook, Twitter and Google contacts were "Digging". Yeah, again, fuck that. So, I moved on and was brought to my brand new user customized Digg front page with absolutely no content whatsoever!

I guess I should have followed some Digg feeds, tried to get some Digg friends or loaded my contacts from Facebook, ect...

Really Digg? Can't just get some news anymore?

After a little more investigation I found I could click on the "Top News" link which brought me back to the same shitty content I was presented with before I logged in.

Then I noticed that I could invite some friends to Digg or give away my invitations. I have no idea what this means or what it does. And why should I give a shit. I don't want social network on an information aggregation site. If I want to social network, I'll use Facebook or Twitter. Not Digg.

And as an aside, must every top 50 website in existence integrate with every other top 50 website? Stop it. I don't want my Facebook friends to know that I just Digg'ed a story about decorative cock rings.

To summarize, Digg has become a shitty hybrid of GMail, Twitter and, well, Digg circa 2007. The luster is gone. Innovation at Digg is apparently dead.

Luckily, there is another.