Digg

Several weeks ago we announced the launch of Digg Newsrooms, which represents our next step towards creating tools for finding the best news. We've received a tremendous amount of feedback from loyal users and new users alike, and many more improvements and fixes are in the pipeline.

Today we're opening the Beta to all users!

Digg Newsrooms are still in Beta, so please continue sending us your suggestions and feedback! If you're the excitable type, you can dive right into Digg Newsrooms, or you can read below for a discussion on the new features which comprise them.

This post will discuss:

• The Digg Newsroom homepage,
• the Front Page and Newswire pages in Newsrooms,
• how awards work,
• the how and the why of Newsroom activity feeds, and
• when stories show a Newsroom header.

Let's take a look at the details.

Discovering Digg Newsrooms

Your first encounter with Digg Newsrooms will undoubtedly be the Digg Newsrooms homepage, which shows six featured Newsrooms as well as the full list of Newsrooms, ranked according to number of followers. You can follow a Newsroom from the Newsroom homepage page, or after entering a Newsroom (for example, Technology, Science or World News).

After following a Digg Newsroom you'll start earning awards within that Newsroom (more on these later), your activity on stories in the that Newsroom will show up in its activity feed, and you will occasionally see top Newsroom stories in your My News. The followed Newsroom will also become available in the Newsrooms drop-down menu in the header to make it easier to reach.

We intend to create more Newsrooms over time. We're really interested to hear your suggestions for the next Newsrooms to launch! We're definitely also interested in exploring user creation of Newsrooms, but we want to make sure we've created a solid experience and ironed out most of our bugs before we open that Pandora's Box.

Newsrooms' Front Page and Newswire

Moving onward from discovering Newsrooms, let's focus a bit on the parts which compose a Digg Newsroom. For those playing along at home, the Technology Newsroom is currently the largest and is a vibrant place to start reading. You'll land on the Newsroom Front Page.

The Front Page is a list of the best content in the Newsroom. Best is based on our new Digg Newsroom algorithm which takes into account external signals (from networks like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn), user reputation (in particular their reputation in that specific Newsroom), and recency of the story. Unlike Top News, stories can move up and down the story list as more users Digg and bury: in Newsrooms, judgement is swift.

The companion to the Front Page is the Newswire, which is the proving ground for new content attempting to reach a Newsroom's Front Page. All stories on the Front Page have already reached the top of that Newsroom's Newswire and were promoted. News stories reach the Front Page approximately every ten minutes.

One critical distinction about the a Newsroom's Newswire is that not all content is submitted by users. If you see a story with zero Diggs and a "Submit" button next to it instead of a "Digg" button, then the Newsroom has already identified that story as relevant, and it is waiting for a user to verify this. Once you've submitted a zero Digg story it becomes yours, identical to if you had submitted it via the "Submit" button in the Digg header bar.

Awards in Digg Newsrooms

One of the many new aspects of Digg Newsrooms is the introduction of awards. Logged in users who have followed a Newsroom earn awards by Digging and burying stories, and commenting. Awards are also earned when a fellow Newsroom follower replies to your comment or when one of your stories is promoted from the Newswire onto the Front Page.

Each award is worth a certain number of points based on how hard it is to earn, and the sum of those points are used to create a Newsroom Leaderboard, which represents the most influential users in that Newsroom.

Over the coming weeks and months, we'll extend our initial set of awards, so stay on your toes.

The Newsroom Activity Feed

When we introduced the Digg Newswire a couple months ago we also introduced a new activity feed module, showing everything that users Dugg and buried within the Newswire. We've extended that module to work in Digg Newsrooms as well, where it shows stories that followers Digg, stories they bury, comments they post, and awards they receive.

The Newsroom activity feed only shows activity on stories in that Newsroom. We hope this visibility will create transparency around who is Digging and burying content, as well as highlight users who read stories before Digging them.

Digg Newsroom Story Page

Also changed, some story pages now show a Digg Newsroom header. For example, this article on political protests shows the World News header.

The Digg story page hasn't changed much in the past year, and we wanted to create a richer and more dynamic experience. If a story has been submitted to a Newsroom, we show its activity feed and the top content in that Newsroom.

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As always, please let us know any comments or bugs you find, or you can give us a shout over on Twitter with your feedback and questions.