Open up your mind and say, ahh...

After a month of testing the new alpha version to invite-only users, Digg’s redesigned site is live for everyone. The new interface and functionality of the social news network focuses on the personalized news stream, “My News,” which shows stories dugg by users you choose to follow (similar to Twitter), rather than the most popular news (note: at press time, the new site is still experiencing some downtime issues).

The company has had a turbulent year. In April, Founder Kevin Rose became CEO after Jay Adelson stepped down, reportedly in part because Digg’s venture capitalists were frustrated that they had yet to see a return on the $40 million invested in the company despite staff cuts in 2009 to improve profitability.

The site has also been struggling with a decline in traffic, according to Compete.com, only further increasing the pressure to reinvent itself. Is this redesign really the re-imagining of a social platform or just a band-aid that will only stop the bleeding temporarily?

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A New Digg Experience

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This site also has an improved content submission process. The “Digg It” submission bar appears prominently at the top center of the page. Users no longer have to navigate to a separate page to submit content, and users can also easily share submissions via Twitter, Facebook or e-mail. Digg also has a range of new, unique features, such as saving stories to read for later.

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The SUL and Working with Publishers

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Taking more cues from Twitter, the new Digg makes it easier to discover users to follow with its own version of the Suggested User List, which includes media publishers and celebrity figures like Ashton Kutcher, who, by the way, doesn’t have nearly as many followers (4,000+) as he does on Twitter.

The SUL and Digg’s initiative to recruit big brands to follow seems to be paying off. Some of the accounts listed, including Mashable, have grown from a few hundred followers to thousands in just a month. In an e-mail sent to publishers this week, Digg’s new Product Manager Mike Cieri highlighted Digg’s help page for new publishers and its plans to “help publishers drive traffic and revenue, including improved analytics and reporting, additional incoming feed capabilities, and improving the discovery process to ensure all publishers are being found and followed on Digg.” Working with brands and publishers has helped generate user interest and revenue for sites like Foursquare and Twitter, and Digg will likely try to do the same.

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Too Much or Too Little Too Late?

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Despite the many improvements to the interface and overall experience on the site, only time will tell as to whether the redesign is too much or too little too late. First, the redesign may be too much of a shift for Digg’s core users, who have traditionally have driven much of the activity on the site, even after the “Top Digger” list was removed. Because the emphasis is now on a self-curated stream, its top diggers may be alienated. However, if the new functionality works to attract a more mainstream userbase, then Digg still wins.

Alternatively, the changes may not be enough. Digg is clearly taking lessons from the likes of Twitter and Facebook in regards to how content is being shared on those platforms. But is this new redesign enough? After all, content submission is still largely automated through a link submission process or an RSS feed, and the comments, opinions and conversation is mostly secondary part of the experience. This is still far from Facebook and Twitter, where the opinion and commentary of the user sharing the content is nearly as important as the content itself, featured prominently on in the Twitter stream or Facebook News Feed with the link or content blurb below.

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Conclusion

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What Digg may benefit from is the new seamlessness of the submission and consumption processes. Users that are looking for a curated stream alongside the popular content can do it on Digg. The majority of Digg’s userbase will likely find the new design refreshing and it very well may gain some traction among users that feel overwhelmed with the real-time news stream or the pontifications in their news feed. Better yet, Digg may attract a whole new audience looking for a place to discover news through curated sources.

What are your thoughts? Do you like the new Digg? Will the new version attract more users to the struggling social news site or is it taking its last breaths?

“I’ll be out of bed in five minutes,” is not a true statement because it’s a promise not meant to be kept. It actually means, “go away, I’m sleeping, I’ll say what I need to get rid of you.”

“Your call is very important to us,” is not a true statement either. The truth is self-evident.

“I promise I’ll tell the manager about this,” is of course not a real promise either. It might be uttered with good intent, or might be designed to get an annoying customer to go away, but still…

You can already guess the problem with little lies. They blur the line, and they lead (pretty quickly) to big lies. The worst kind of little lies are the ones you make to yourself. Once you’re willing to lie to yourself, you’re also willing to cheat at golf, and after that, it’s all downhill.

Companies that refuse to break small promises have a much easier time keeping big promises. And they earn a reputation, one that makes their handshake worth more.

Given that expectation and trust are just about all we have left to sell, it seems to me that little lies and small promises are at the very heart of the matter. And they’re a simple choice, nothing requiring an MBA or a spreadsheet.

It all depends on what you want to stand for.

RIM, the company behind the BlackBerry, has acquired mobile storefront operator Cellmania.

Cellmania has extensive experience in developing, managing and distributing mobile application storefronts for handset operators. Its mFinder white label system counts Telstra, Telus, T-Mobile, Virgin Mobile, Sprint, Airtel, AT&T, Boost Mobile, Optus, Orange and others among its clientele.

On its website, Cellmania says that it will continue to support its existing client base even after joining RIM.

The Cellmania acquisition shows that RIM is willing to invest in a solid infrastructure for its platform. The BlackBerry App World just received a major overhaul, however, despite RIM’s large device penetration, available apps in App World pale in comparison to both the iPhone and Android’s offerings.

Still, it’s important to remember that there is a lot more to a robust application store — especially on the mobile front — than just having a large quantity of applications.

For instance, despite its soaring growth, paid app support in the Android Market is still limited to a handful of countries, as compared to the much wider international presence of Nokia’s Ovi Store and the iOS App Store. Google has also faced challenges with its mobile payment options.

This is where a company like Cellmania can give RIM a real advantage. Because it powers the individual app stores that mobile phone carriers tie to many of their feature phones, the company already has vast infrastructure in place for working with various carriers, collecting payments from multiple sources and accepting application submissions from developers all over the world.

Having a streamlined system for both delivering apps to users and collecting app submissions from developers will only become more important as smartphone usage continues to grow and other mobile devices like tablets become more prominent.

This forward-looking move may just give RIM some backend advantages as it continues to face tough competition from many different manufacturers and platforms.

I’m kind of weirded out by the Evesham Police use of Facebook to post mugshots and surveillance video of alleged criminals. On the one hand, I think it’s a potentially useful way to reach people, as Facebook is home to over 500 million users. On the other hand, there seems like a lot of opportunity to get this one wrong. I mean, most of these people are in the “suspected” and “alleged” category.

I’m curious as to your take. Is this where we’re headed, or is this a scary use of the technology. Again, I haven’t made up my mind. I’m just a bit fascinated by the usage. What say you?

This post is part of Mashable’s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark.. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Name: Shuffler.fm

Quick Pitch: Shuffler.fm is like Pandora mixed with StumbleUpon — a music and blog discovery service.

Genius Idea: Music fans, prepare to geek out. If you’re really into checking out new music blogs/always knowing about the latest music discovery and Internet radio services, Shuffler.fm was tailor-made for you. It’s basically Pandora for music blogs — shuffling through thousands of sites to display both blog content and new jams.

The site, which launched in alpha last week, is the brainchild of the Tone collective, an interactive media and entertainment agency. The first version is pretty simple; merely surf over to Shuffler.fm, choose a channel — anything from Alt-country to Dubstep — and let the music listening/blog-reading begin.

When the first blog pops up, the most recently loaded MP3 will begin playing (a la Pandora). You can choose to skip said blog and song and go to the next, or let it play out. Once one song ends, you’re taken to a new blog site, where another jam takes over. You can also pause a song and finish exploring the site in question. At present, you can’t browse a blog whilst listening to the entirety of the featured MP3s, but that feature is coming in the next iteration.

Some of you might be wondering how this service differs from ExtensionFM, a Chrome add-on we featured in a past Spark of Genius. Well, that extension functions more as a music scraper than a discovery system. After installing the plugin, you can surf to various music blogs, where ExtensionFM yoinks all available songs and transfers them to a playlist. A lot of my music blogger friends were not too keen on this plugin, actually, since they felt like it detracted from the content of the blog. Not so with Shuffler.fm.

“We take users page by page,” Co-Founder Tim Heineke tells us. “We give bloggers page views, and help users experience [new blogs]. The next flip of thumb  could open a hidden door with music gems on a cool music blog.” Currently, the service includes 1,600 blogs, but more are being added every day (you can even submit yours, if you so desire). Actually, Heineke tells us Shuffler.fm and ExtensionFM work quite well together — simply use Chrome to play with Shuffler, and lift songs that you enjoy for later listening via ExtensionFM.

Shuffler.fm plans to add more features as it continues to grow, including premium accounts and iPhone and iPad apps (in case you were wondering how the Tone dudes plan on making money). Currently, the free service is a great way to learn more about music via blogs, while also discovering some new tunes. You can also share selections with friends via Facebook, Twitterand e-mail. Now, if you would excuse me, a really awesome Thermals song just popped up and this blog looks rather rad… Goodbye, productivity.

[img credit: The Cleveland Kid]

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Sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark

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BizSpark is a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

When Gerald Roush died in late May, he left behind the Ferrari Market Letter. This newsletter, which he started and ran, had nearly 5,000 subscribers, paying him $130 a year for a subscription. Do the math! It’s a good living–even without a fancy website.

The newsletter, it appears, was not just lucrative, it was a bargain. It chronicled the pricing, whereabouts and details of just about every Ferrari ever made. If you were a buyer or a seller, you subscribed. If you wanted to run an ad, you were required to include the car’s VIN, which added to Roush’s voluminous database.

The Roush effect involves extraordinary domain knowledge, a market small enough to understand and diligently earning the role of data middleman. The players in the market want there to be one clearinghouse, one authority who can connect the data, see the trends and publish the conventional wisdom.

It might be a newsletter, a conference or an online database. The tactics don’t matter, but the role is indispensable. If you need examples to persuade you to try this, they won’t be hard to find. One of my favorites is my friend Michael’s role in the book industry. He’s bigger and more important than the famous (but failing) trade journal.

Just about every tribe needs a Gerald Roush. And in many markets, they can afford to pay someone like him very handsomely.