Why Is New Digg Still Unusable?

Two months after the release of Digg v4, the website remains largely unusable, especially for (former) heavy users like myself. Instead of writing up all the difficulties, I thought a photo gallery of the multitude of errors I encountered during one hour of surfing Digg would best illustrate why using new Digg is largely an exercise in futility.

It all started when I went to the Digg homepage and found myself logged out, though I had been logged in 20 minutes earlier:

Well, better try to login again:

Apparently I can’t log in…. because I’m already logged in? A reload fixed the problem. I then tried to click on a story to join the discussion, only to be greeted with this:

Again, another reload fixed the problem. But who wants to click reload every other page? I liked the story so I tried to Digg it, but alas, I hit another roadblock:

Sigh, another reload fixed the problem. On to another story, and I notice another problem. The story lists having 1 comment, yet there are none to be found. I add my own comment, refresh and… the other comment is still gone:

Little did I know this would be the first of many issues with the comments. I jump to one of my submissions to respond to someone who couldn’t find a video on the link I submitted.

Apparently adding a new comment is a forbidden request now! I move on to a front page story published by Slate that has made the front page, even though it was submitted at 1 AM and mysteriously had 60 Diggs (but no comments):

Well, I’ve said my piece. A few minutes later, let’s make sure it’s still there by checking out my comments page:

As you can see, it’s…. disappeared! Grand. In the meantime, I’ve found an article that’s been submitted to Digg recently that I want to Digg:

Digg apparently wants me to log-in again, but I’m not allowed to log-in, because I already am logged in (this is when an emoticon of a guy with steam coming out of his ears would suffice). Let’s try to go back to Digg’s front page:

The icing on the cake. Through a couple of hours of using Digg, I ran the gamut of errors: getting logged out, unable to Digg articles, unexpected system errors, disappearing comments, and the ever-annoying broken axle. Even when you want to use new Digg, it’s too broken to be enjoyable.

My advice to those still at Digg: just make the site work. Stop spending so much time trying to implement new features when the current ones barely work.

[tags]new digg, digg errors, problems with new digg, usability, functionality, why is new digg still broke, development, social media, do you understand how to beta test, website design[/tags]