• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, August 9, 2011

Can lightning strike twice? Digg, the high-flying-to-floundering social news site, just added new features, which some are suggesting could have big potential.  

"Want to see the freshest videos about technology that have been validated enough to get 10 or more Diggs but aren't so popular that they've been dugg more than 50 times?" asks ReadWriteWeb. Per the new changes, "Those kinds of views are now easy to set up and read in real time."

"The idea is to make it easier to spot stories before they become popular, offering a more 'instant' view of the stories landing in Digg," Softpedia explains.

Also of note, there's now a new level of visibility into who has voted to bury a story, and when the burying is done on Digg's new Newswire service. "Over the coming weeks and months, the core ideas (rewarding transparency, showing real-time content and activity, increasing visibility of how actions impact story ranking) will be spreading across the rest of Digg," explained Will Larson, a software engineer at the company.  

"Other features of Newswire include customizable sorting and displays that can be tailored to each user and an in-page update system," writes Search Engine Land. "The updating system operates much like Twitter in alerting users when new stories have been added."

"Digg has been reeling since their ill-fated launch of version 4, but new improvements and a more positive attitude towards their community are steps in the right direction," Search Engine Land adds.

"The 'Newswire' section is definitely interesting, but really seems like another attempt to get users into participating more in the curating process, which historically the mass majority of Digg visitors have not done," notes BlueGlass.com. "Past efforts with the Upcoming Section, the Recommendation Engine, and the My News section have really failed to ever get even a small fraction of Digg's users to do more than just read the Front Page."