The Fastest Way to Digg

Back in October, I did a comparison of load times for the three major socially driven sites, Digg, Netscape, and Reddit. The results were quite obvious: Reddit was the fastest, since it is almost entirely text-based, Netscape came in second, and Digg was last, as expected. A few months later, Digg updated the site but failed to improve speed. The newly updated DiggRiver helps alleviate the situation.

I have long been using various different mobile versions of Digg to browse the content on the site without having to load the actual site which is plagued with exorbitant load times. But one problem that persisted across the board was the inability to Digg a story directly from the mobile version of the site. Now, with the newly updated version of DiggRiver (Digg's official mobile site), the team has finally added the ability to Digg stories.

msaleem_diggriverdiggupd.png

While the mobile version of the site may not be the prettiest, a quick speed test shows that the mobile version is more than 10-20 times faster (at various speeds) than the actual site, and without any significant loss in the user experience for the majority of the community.

Digg.com Results

msaleem_driverspd2.png

Digg | River Results

msaleem_driverspd.png

Speed tests courtesy of Web Site Optimization.

**Disclaimer: I am a Netscape Navigator.

Trackbacks (0)

There are no trackbacks for this post yet.

Reader Comments (3)

tech, April 7, 2007

yes, it can be the fastest way...

knupNET, April 7, 2007

Thanks for the post. I'd never heard of DiggRiver.

markus941, April 10, 2007

The Web Site Optimization tool doesn't always do a great job of telling you the whole story. You might want to try the Firebug Firefox add-on which has a real time speed tab - it's a lot more accurate.