• by Shankar Gupta , June 26, 2006

As part of a redesign, collaborative news site Digg.com is expanding beyond technology by adding new sections devoted to a broad range of topics.

The site will now include separate sections for world and business news, entertainment, science, and gaming, each of which will be divided into a host of subsections for users to further categorize stories.

Digg.com's editorial model relies on readers to vote on stories. The more votes a story earns, the further up in the rankings it goes--and when stories reach the top ranks, they appear on the front page. Jay Adelson, CEO of Digg.com, first toldOnlineMediaDaily of expansion plans last year, shortly after receiving $2.8 million in venture capital.

In addition to the categories, Digg users will also have the option to post and vote on video content. Another addition was a kind of social media feature--users can set a list of Digg friends, and be notified when anyone from that group diggs a story.

The successful Digg.com--which grew to 1.3 million unique visitors last month from 129,000 in May--recently inspired Time Warner's AOL to relaunch Netscape as a collaborative news site.