Digg | featured news

Digg took a big risk when they added in-line advertisements that users could digg or bury. Four months later, however, early signs indicate that DiggAds are a win for all parties involved: users, advertisers, and especially Digg.

Digg founder Kevin Rose dropped a morsel of information about a major overhaul to the social news website that's been a long time coming...Instead of limiting the pool to input from its own users, Rose indicated that Digg may also begin taking into account link-sharing data from other social networks.

Later today, Digg will open up its rumored read/write API. Up until now, developers could only read data from Digg. With the new API, web and desktop apps will also be able to contribute data to Digg. This will allow developers to write desktop and web applications that enable users to interact with Digg without having to go to the site, for example.

On Wednesday Digg unveiled a new ad platform that will give companies an ad medium that looks and feels like user-submitted stories which have been promoted to Digg's front page.

It must be something in the air. Spring perhaps. But when high level employees start to leave perfectly good startups before a liquidity event, there's usually something pretty important that they think they need to work on.

On a day when Microsoft announced 5,000 layoffs, the 7 or so people losing their jobs at Digg may seem like a drop in the bucket. But that represents about about 10 percent of Digg's 75-person workforce, whereas the 5,000 at Microsoft represents 5 percent.