Digg gets rid of shouts, turns to Facebook and Twitter

In a video Town Hall last week, the folks at Digg announced they were going to take a new approach to sharing Digg stories. That change started with the removal of the "shout" feature, used to promote your Digg posts to friends on the site. Instead of shouts, Digg now has sharing options including email, Twitter and Facebook.

I see a few likely effects of this. First, Digg will be able to draw in more traffic from these other popular social sites, rather than just promoting stories to people who are already active Diggers. Second, becoming a power user won't be as much a matter of collecting contacts on Digg. This might go a long way toward making it a more Internet-wide enterprise, and spreading the power around on Digg. I think the main effect will come from adding Twitter and Facebook links, not from removing shouts, which weren't the most effective tool on the site to begin with.

[via Appscout]

Tags: digg, facebook, sharing, shout, twitter