The new owners of once-popular social bookmarking platform Digg have relaunched the site with new social features and a new look.

A Beta Digg

Online media firm Betaworks recently acquired the core assets of San Francisco-based Digg  with the intention of turning Digg back into a startup and rebuilding it from scratch in six weeks. In a recent blog post, the 10-person team offered a brief primer on its plans to rebuild the site, as well as more detail on why Betaworks purchased Digg in the first place. “We acquired Digg because we all need a product to help [us] find, read, and understand what the Internet is talking about right now,” the company wrote, adding that Digg once “represented the messiness of the Internet at its best.”

Old Digg

Digg, launched in 2004, became a global sensation as an online venue for submitting news stories that climbed or sank in rankings based on votes, referred to at the website as “diggs”. More than 28 million stories were submitted to Digg since it launched, however popularity fizzled after a site overhaul – meant to help it keep pace with social-media services such as Facebook and Twitter – drove away users.

Relaunch

Digg was officially relaunched on August 1st after a very rapid redesign of the social bookmarking site. Old features such as the Newsbar and Newsrooms are gone, with a focus on top, popular, and upcoming stories, and Facebook and Twitter integration. The new features include large photos, restructured headlines, and a cleaner interface. Users are required to sign in to the new Digg through Facebook, and Facebook shares, tweets, and other data are used to determine where a story should sit on the home page. Betaworks has also promised some new features to be added in the coming weeks, including developer API, network-based personalisation features, and enhancements for mobile use.