Guess what planet covered in 70% water doesn’t have to sign-up to the new Digg with Facebook, and can now use Twitter for authentication.

(Earth.)

(Previous notes on Digg stuff.)

When the new Digg launched, it only allowed sign-up with Facebook (claiming it was an anti-spam measure). It was by far the biggest complaint I saw from anybody who checked it out. (Full disclosure, I didn’t like it either.)

But today Digg promised that by the end of the week, the dark days of Facebook-only would soon be ending.

[update- a week later, twitter sign-up not enabled, and they also took away ability to submit link with twitter. #sideeye

update #2: Got a nice tweet from a Digg dev, Twitter sign-up is still in the works, just taking longer than expected. No word on why Twitter-submit-URL disappeared, but probably related.

update #3: They added it! Digg now allows Twitter sign-up, and restored the ability to submit links with Twitter.]

rethinkdigg:

(Bold added by me.)

<snipped>

By the end of the week, Digg users will be able to:

• Sign up and sign in with a Twitter account 
• Choose whether or not their diggs are shared to Facebook Timeline 
• Retweet, Reply to, or Favorite tweets displayed on the Digg homepage [ed- This is pretty cool/rarely available directly from a site. Respect.]

Also, an interesting note from their previous blog post:

• We’ve seen over 50,000 story submissions, with about 100 stories making their way to the homepage

• We’re sending about 200 visitors per minute to great stories that make it to our Top section, from sites like Foodbeast, The Atlantic Wire and Nowness

Hold up. Unless… the lack of diversity is just leading to the same dominant domains who have their social media game honed and show up everywhere. No offense to The Atlantic Wire… but it’s getting crowded in Atlantic Stories on Aggregator Sites town. So I take back what I said about Digg getting a story diversity pass above. Only worth it when there’s a unique vision payoff.

Anyway, like I said earlier… No matter what happens to Digg, I think it’s rad that they’re trying new stuff.

Extreme Makeover, Digg Edition happened today.

As of now, there are no comments. Just weighted/voted “top” stories. I’m trying to figure out how they determine “Top” and “Popular.” It seems to be weighted/seeded as much by a story’s Twitter activity as by its own internal Diggs (votes). Even if it isn’t, Twitter shares are certainly prominently displayed. (Facebook activity is displayed, too, but it’s pretty empty for most of the stories compared to Twitter activity).

[update: According to TechCrunch and The Verge , the new Digg does use Twitter and Facebook to determine top stories:

Digg’s new algorithms now also look at signals from Twitter and Facebook

…Betaworks also says that it’s changed the Digg score to take social sharing from Facebook and Twitter into account when ranking stories.]

Another thing- a story shows the Twitter avis of people sharing the link, regardless of whether they’re Digg users.

Below you’ll see a screenshot that displays my Twitter avi (among others), despite the fact that I’ve yet to register for Digg. (Unaware of Digg, I shared the story on Twitter.)

So yeah. Very Twitter-aware.

Then… paradoxically, it requires Facebook auth to sign-in. Betaworks are total Twitter-heads (my people!), and anticipating the FB-auth backlash, they assure us in their FAQ that requiring Facebook is an anti-spam measure, and will soon allow other ways to sign-in

Part of me wonders if it’s as much about preventing spam as it is about just getting the site up and running (respect!). After all, you can submit a link without Facebook auth:

#sideeye

Whatevs, they got it up and running. Right on. Even if this doesn’t “fix” Digg, they have nothing to lose by trying crazy stuff. Too many once-popular sites ride a slow-descent, scared of alienating their existing/decaying users. Cool to see a site-in-crisis try something for its future users.

rethinkdigg:

On July 20, we announced that we were turning Digg back into a startup and rebuilding it from scratch in six weeks. After an intense month and a half, we managed to get the new Digg up and running on a fresh code base and infrastructure. We now have a solid foundation on which to build, and we expect to build fast. Yesterday, we previewed the new Digg applications for web, iPhone, and mobile web and today we’re happy to share Digg v1.

While today’s launch is a milestone for us, we’re more excited about what’s coming next. In the subsequent weeks and months we will:

introduce network-based personalization features (like we do in News.me) to make Digg a more relevant and social experience

experiment with new commenting features

continue to iterate Digg for mobile web

move the website forward with features like the Reading List, different views into the top stories on Digg, and more data to help users better understand why a particular story is trending

launch an API so that members of the development community can build all the products that we haven’t even thought of yet

For anyone who may have questions about what’s going on and where we plan to head, we’ve put together an FAQ. We’d appreciate any feedback.We’re proud of what we’ve built over the last month and a half, but today is just the beginning. Hello world, welcome to v1.