The Digg feature ‘Shout’, which allowed users to share stories with other users on the site itself has been discontinued.
It was found that the feature was being misused by some users, who only promoted their own posts by spamming others by sending out shouts.
Digg has now introduced a share feature, which allows users to share stories, images, videos or whatever information they wish to share with their contacts through sites like Twitter and Facebook. They can also email the stories to their friends.
The announcement was formally made by Digg founder Kevin Rose and CEO Jay Adelson during a Digg Townhall broadcast.
The Digg blog states that this decision was made based on feedback received from users. Shouts have been a controversial feature since their inception and considering the ever-changing landscape of the social web Digg elected to remove them in favor of more popular social sharing options.
Users will now have to make use of the ‘share’ feature, which has been added on the homepage and then choose the mode of sharing i.e. Twitter, Facebook or email.
According to the LA Times blog, Digg is still looking for the perfect solution to replace shouts and allow their users to communicate with each other without allowing some to abuse the system.
Digg has also discontinued their ‘blog this’ feature, as it was not really popular.
