Digg has returned to the internet after a month and a half of development from new owners Betaworks. Bought for half a million dollars on 12th July, despite the fact that it was once valued at $164 million and was considered the forefront of web news sharing, Digg is trying to regain some of its lost ground.

With its latest version, the site has changed from the traditional list of news stories with their respective number of diggs next to them, into something that looks quite similar to the Gawker network of sites that includes: Gizmodo, Kotaku and Deadspin. It features blown up feature stories at the top, with popular ones underneath with a little less exposure. Newly added and “upcoming” stories are featured at the bottom without picture support.

Social networking interaction has been improved, with the ability to link stories through to your Facebook and Twitter, as well as new links with smartphones like Apple's iPhone. All this was bundled into what the creators call Digg v1.

“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,” reads the statement discussing the update.

“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”

KitGuru Says: What do you think of the new Digg? Better than before? Or the death of the site?

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