I have about 20 minutes to give my initial impressions on the new Digg profile redesign but have arrived at my conclusion: it sucks.

A few things come to mind based on everything I’ve used Digg for in the past:

1. Digg took a step backwards in social news and took a step forward on social superfluity. Digg is now letting you send shout outs to your friends but doesn’t emphasize the initial foundation upon which the site was created: Digg is a social news site. I already turned off shouts; I use Digg for news. Not for Facebook-Myspace-Yahoo! Mash-like social networks. Merging the two when there’s already too much of it in the open is totally unnecessary.
2. Where did the descriptions go? Now, I can’t see descriptions of the stories I’ve submitted nor can I see descriptions of stories that my friends have submitted. Since most of us use descriptions from the article text itself, it’s rather pointless to remove story descriptions because now I cannot easily discern if I’ve read the story or not before.

Just a few months ago, I had a love-hate relationship with Digg. Now, after acquainting myself with the system and learning more about what works and what doesn’t, I’m one of the top users of the service. Do I still hate Digg? Occasionally. After all, Digg is a social network that unifies individuals with different opinions. You can definitely expect the unexpected here. Additionally, there are a few fixes I still hope to see for the Digg experience to be improved for all users. But do I still love Digg? I think that answer is self-evident. I find most of my interesting news from Digg, and I consider my knowledge of everyday news to be a lot more comprehensive now that I am an avid user of the service.

On Monday, I celebrated my one-year anniversary as a Digg member. After using Digg quite regularly lately in the latter part of my membership at Digg, I’ve gotten acclimated to the service and to the likes and dislikes of others. Granted, I don’t know everything, but I feel that I’ve gotten a pretty solid feel for what works and what doesn’t. Here are some tips that should help you get the most out of Digg too.

Some of you may know that my grandfather is quite ill and has been in the ICU for the past few weeks. I’ve been spending a lot of time focusing on family and in the hospital. A number of friends online have helped me be strong. One in particular, Miguel Lopez, shared this story (below) with me about how online relationships have helped him cope with the illness of his mother.

It started with a headache.

My mother, like most senior citizens, has more than a fair share of health problems. But a few weeks ago, they turned worse. She started complaining of severe headaches, then dizziness, then vertigo. Worried, we called 911 and soon she was in the ER, being subject to all kinds of tests.

I’m sure most of you have been in a hospital waiting room. In most circumstances there is not much you can do to try to keep your mind away from the uneasy feeling creeping out of your gut. You call your immediate family or close friends, watch the TV, read a magazine.

Wow, this totally came as a shock… I submitted this 7 days ago and thought it died. There was an incredible response to the article I submitted but I thought the story expired to the land of the forgotten.

Then, I saw the popular stories in my feed reader, and I’m astonished. Here’s the Digg story so you can see it with your own eyes.

I guess the Digg algorithm is getting harder and harder to nail.

Many of you know I’m writing more and more about Digg. I’ve become deeply involved in the community and I’ve gotten a greater understanding of what stories make it to the main page. I’m about to break the Top 100 (that list is here). It’s something, that, as Muhammad Saleem said, is because of a heightened awareness of what that community seeks:

Because they understand the nuances of the site and the preferences of the community, they are able to submit content that is appreciated by the democracy-based community of Digg and the content is consequently promoted to the home page.

When I submit a story to Digg, I have a good deal of confidence that my stories have a decent chance of hitting the main page, typically because I generally look for the content that is worthy of a Digg front-page mention. That’s why I was astonished when I saw a story in my feed reader that I ultimately submitted to Digg get buried at 43 votes. I spotted an anomaly that I typically didn’t detect once the story got buried: the rate at which it was being Dugg still grew, and by the time I checked the story again just a few hours later, it had an additional 60+ votes. Typically, buried stories taper off. They don’t grow like this. The community saw the piece and felt, like me, that it was deserving of a front page promotion, but the story inexplicably didn’t make it.