Following 800 comments on how its Google Reader substitute should work, Digg has decided that it will have to be simple, fast, cross-platform and easy to convert existing Reader accounts, naturally.
A week and a half ago, Google announced that its RSS service Google Reader will be bowing out on 1 July. In its wake, other services are stepping in to pick up the pieces. One of these RSS saviours is social news website Digg, which has put plans to build a reader at the top of its agenda and is pushing to have the service ready by the time Google Reader clocks out.
Having put the call out for users to let them know what they want from an RSS reader, the four points that came up repeatedly in the comments were: keep it simple, make it fast, synchronise across devices and make it easy to import from existing Google Reader accounts.
But this is just the bare bones of what Digg is planning to build. “We want to build a product that’s clean and flexible, that bends easily and intuitively to the needs of different users,” states the latest blog post from the project. “We want to experiment with and add value to the sources of information that are increasingly important, but difficult to surface and organise in most reader applications – like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Reddit, LinkedIn, or Hacker News.”
While these more ambitious, content-led plans for the Digg reader may not be up and running by 1 July, they are being considered in the long run. And if users do spot anything they feel is missing in the initial release, they are encouraged to let the team at Digg know and be patient.
