Digg Doesn't Suck Anymore and Weans Itself From Microsoft

Digg is reasserting itself as the social bookmarking site with pizazz, buzz and connections. Within the past weeks, Digg's Daniel Burka, formally apologized to users announcing,"Digg has 99.987% less suck, followed with the announcement of a new DiggBar and cut short its exclusive advertising partnership with Microsoft. Digg apparently likes 1,2,3 approaches to problem solving.

DiggBar:

The newly released DiggBar is a nimble little navigator that can be accessed on any Web page by simply typing digg.com/ before the url and hitting enter. Readers are given a super short url that can be easily submitted to Facebook, Twitter and other social bookmarking sites. The DiggBar displays not only the comments and number of Diggs, readers can view how many times the story has been viewed world-wide. On the very cool side, DiggBar can access related stories and a random button for a series of surprises.

Digg Goes Within for Advertising:

Digg cut Microsoft loose as its exclusive advertising partner. Instead, Digg will control its own destiny in on-line advertising and deal direct with advertisers. Digg has built up an in-house sales staff that will have the flexibility to create custom non-Internet Advertising Bureau advertising coupled with standardized banner ads and move Digg to the next level. The between Digg and Microsoft commenced in 2007 and contemplated a three-year time span with wiggle room in the event Digg wanted to go it alone.

According to Zachary Rogers at ClickZ, Microsoft will continue selling network reserve through Microsoft Media. However, Digg will take the helm for all advertising. Both parties express a desire to take their advertising strategies for clients beyond standard IAB standard ads and open up Internet advertising to include creative approaches. Mike Maser, Digg's Chief Financial Officer and Strategy Officer complimented Microsoft by saying, "We've had a great relationship with Microsoft over the last year and a half."

Microsoft has just completed a "High-engagement" placement package for the Discovery Channel's fifth season of "Deadliest Catch". The campaign includes Web, mobile, games and other channel high visibility placement ads. The endless possibilities of connecting people to people and in turn selling products or services knows no bounds on the Internet. The next leg of the race to capture the attention of billions of multi-cultural/multi-lingual users should be very interesting.

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