DiggBar: Boon or Bane

Digg recently launched the most awaited DiggBar, a new toolbar that will appear on any page that Digg links to. It is essentially an iframed toolbar that allows you to interact with content on Digg without actually having to visiting the site. After the regular digging process, the page submitted will open up in a shortened URL like http://digg.com/d1o9Fh

Click the image for a larger view

The new DiggBar diplays the below information and opens up everything on the same page.

Number of Diggs for the Post

Title of the post

Number of comments but this is currently restricted to the latest, most controversial, and the most popular comments.

Number of views

Links to Bury, Related Post by Keyword

Link to more pages from the website submitted

Link to random post

Link to share the submitted URL in Facbook, Twitter, Mail

Link to the survey form on DiggBar

A “X” which closes the diggbar and moves to original page URL from the Shorten URL

Option to hide the bar always

Check the video on Kevin Rose’s Explanation on the DiggBar

There are many question related to DiggBar whether it is useful or whether it has destroyed the link bait. Listed below are the Pros and cons of the DiggBar

Pros
a. All those home page stories that send large amount of traffic around the web are now redirecting right back to Digg.
b. You can jump from one from one promoted Digg story to another. c. Its going to be powerful tool to share stories through twitter and facebook.
d. Shorten URLs are the hot fields now.

Cons
a. You can only three top comments and cannot submit your own comment through the toolbar
b. There are no timestamps on the diggbar to let know whether it is old or new
c. Recommendation engine is not present
d. Its does not allow the website owners to promote their websites on Digg. Its not going to link to the website URL directly instead link only to the shortened URL
e. Comparison between Stumbleupon And DiggBar
f. May be hard for the new users of Digg to understand it.

Comparison with StumbleUpon Toolbar

StumbleUpon Toolbar	DiggBar
The Stumble button lists only the related websites	The random button list the websites randomly and these websites that are not from the same category
Send traffic to the website visited through the toolbar	Send traffic to the website only if the DiggBar is hidden always.
Easy to find for related websites	The DiggBar don’t provide such a facility

Finally DiggBar is an incremental upgrade to Digg but surely not an alternative to larger social experience and even if it looks like StumbleUpon toolbar its certainly not the replacement for it.

Disclaimer: The post is completely based on individual thoughts and SEO Services Group bears no responsibilities for the thoughts reflected in the post.