When Betaworks announced that they were completely reviving Digg with a brand new and redesigned site, there was understandably considerable fanfare that came along with it. Digg had always been the single most prominent portal to links on the web since it’s launch all the way to Digg v4, which history will look back on as one of the worst failures of any product launches not only on the internet, but perhaps in history.

But that’s all ancient history now as Betaworks works tirelessly to bring back Digg to it’s former glory. Today, Betaworks posted a preview of the new Digg – which they’re calling Digg v1 as a nod to the total rebuilding effort that this is, which is set to launch on Wednesday of this week.

While all the old Digg versions most prominently featured headlines, new Digg v1 puts images and graphics at the forefront of the design. The more Diggs (upvotes in other words) a story get, the larger it’s corresponding image is and the higher up on the homepage it is.

Another big change comes from what’s missing. While old Digg featured things such as newsrooms, commenting, My News, etc. – new Digg v1 is bringing things to the very basics. Gone are comments (though the team has indicated that they’ll be working to bring this back as the site improves), gone are Newsrooms, gone gone gone. Instead all we get are three pages – Top News, Popular, and Upcoming.

Betaworks also announced that they’ll be launching a brand new, rewritten from the ground up mobile Digg application for iPhone alongside the main site this week, as well as a mobile site for other mobile devices.

Rebuilding a site both as prominent and lampooned as Digg is nothing but a monumental task – there’s truly only one chance to get this right. The jury’s still out on whether or not Betaworks can do the impossible and bring Digg back to prominence, but it should be interesting to see them try.

Source: RethinkDigg