Well, Digg just released its new Digg profiles. I spent the last hour or so playing around with the site and checking out the new features. Here are few things that jumped at me right away:

Updated terms and conditions

One of the very first things that notice when you visit the site is the updated terms of use. I guess someone felt that the community needs to be aware of some new rules.

Obviously the language in the document is drafted by attorneys who are first and foremost concerned about Digg, Inc. (”Digg”), the Delaware corporation. My guess is that these attorneys never used the site. Hmmm, Yes, you are a Delaware corporation but aren’t you a social site as well? I do not know why this bothered me. The document was filled with legal jargon that you expect to find on the back of a credit card application. One part that caught my attention under User conduct was item number 6 which stated that users agree not to:

violate any laws in your jurisdiction (including but not limited to copyright laws);

hold on, I thought that Kevin said:

But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company.

The other interesting part in the terms of use was under the trademarks section. The section clearly spells out that “Digg” is a registered trademark for the company. It goes further to state that:

Digg’s trademarks and trade dress may not be used, including as part of trademarks and/or as part of domain names, in connection with any product or service in any manner that is likely to cause confusion.

I guess Digg does not want to see any domains with the name “digg” in them. I wonder if they are indicating that they might actually sue someone who has the word digg in their domain name. Who knows!

The other section that I jumped right to was the new profile section.

In order to view my friends, the old design required me to click on my profile and then click on the friends tab. The new design is definitely an improvement. The right side of the profile page lists 5 of my friends who are currently active on the site. That is a cool feature.

One of the nice features in the old design was a small widget that allowed you to see who from the community befriended you. The new design however lists all my friends in a single page. If that person befriended me back, his listing will include the tag “Mutual Friend”. That is a nice improvement.

The old design gave me an option to view all stories submitted, dugg or commented on by my friends. The new design offers the same feature. However, in the old design, I had the ability to digg the stories from the listing page.

The new design, displays the total number of diggs next to each story. I was not able to digg any of the stories directly from the listing page.

I have to click on the story and then digg it from the story’s own page. I am not sure if this is an issue that will be corrected or if this is the way it is going to be from now on.

The new design features a full list of settings that allows digg users to fully control who can view what on their profile. This is a nice new addition. It is one that I am going to use once and pay very little attention to it later on!

Socialize on Digg

I had to save the best for last. This is probably one of the best features and one most Digg needed the most. In the past, I had to use other social media sites to socialize with my friends. There was no way to communicate  with other Digg users on Digg itself. The new addition to Digg is the “shout” feature which allows users to communicate with one another. It is simply great!

So, there you have it. These are my first impression of the new profile features of Digg. I think overall there are some great improvements although I must admit that I was turned off with the legal disclaimer on the first page!

Tell me, how do you like the new features?

Update #1: I am getting way too many errors as I try to digg or comment on stories. I wonder if the servers are getting hit harder than expected or if there are still some bugs that need to be fixed.