12 Must-Have Tools for Active Digg Users

I’m a pretty active Digg user (here’s my profile) and I thought it’ll be helpful if I talked a little about the Digg tools that I use everyday. Don’t worry, I’m not going to overload you with 50+ redundant tools, most of which only look good but are quite useless.

Trust me, you really don’t need many tools when it comes to Digg. There are only a few which are truly essential. If you want to use Digg efficiently like a power user, try the ones in this list.

Don’t bother with most of the other fancy Digg applications out there. They are usually more eye-candy than beneficial.

What you want are tools that will enhance your proficiency for using Digg. Most of the very active Digg users out there will probably attest to the value of these tools all of which are made for regular and heavy daily use.

These tools are mainly for end users of Digg and not content publishers. If you enjoy the Digg community and want to participate actively, these will help.

Requirements

You should be running web browsers like Firefox or Flock because most of these tools require the Greasemonkey addon or other Firefox extensions. I do recommend using the Firefox browser so do please download it and give it a try.

Without further ado. Here are the Digg tools I use:

1. Digg Alerter

Excellent application which when installed, keeps track of the Digg stories you’ve submitted, along with their digg count and if they have gone popular or not. I usually leave the application running the whole day and click on it intermittently to see how my submissions are doing. Highly recommended.


2. Digg This Firefox Extension

This adds a right-click option to your context menu, allowing you to simply highlight a chunk of text and right click to submit the webpage you’re on. This opens up the Digg submission page in a new tab and its the fastest way to submit a story.


3. Smart Digg Firefox Extension

This shows you if the webpage you are on is already submitted to Digg and if it is already submitted, the digg count for the page. This saves you a lot of time if you’re scanning webpages for stories to submit.


4. Digg Button Animation Enabler [Greasemonkey Script]

This allows you to digg a story using the Digg badge on the site of a webpage without having to click through to the Digg story page. Useful if you just want to digg and move on or when a friend sends you a link to a page with a Digg badge.


5. Google Reader Digg News [Greasemonkey Script]

Add a digg control to every news-item in google reader. When combined with the Digg Button Animation Enabled (see above), you’ll be able to digg articles from your feed reader without clicking through to the original website. I often use this to digg stories that I like after reading them in Google Reader.


6. Digg - Add Mirrors [Greasemonkey Script]

Adds links to DuggMirror, Coral, Duggback and the Wayback machine to Digg story. This is useful because sites often go down when they hit the Digg frontpage. Helpful if you want to provide a mirror for a story you’ve submitted or a story from your site. I usually keep it turned off until I need to use it.


7. Feeddit

This is simply the feed for the Digg frontpage and it’s better than the original feed because each feed item has a direct link to the story, alongside a link to the submitter, comments and mirror. This is a great way to monitor what stories appear on the Digg frontpage daily.


8. Digg Me Later! [Greasemonkey Script]

This allows you to digg the article directly from the article page after you read it without having to return to digg. Not essential but still useful because it saves you from one extra click. Don’t use it if you’re the type that diggs first and reads later.


9. TINC - Who’s Digging You?

Allows you to find out who is digging your stories and provides links to their submissions and user profile in case you want to reciprocate.

10. Digg Comment Viewer

A great, fast-loading application which tracks the ratings of the comments you’ve left on Digg. It’s simple and easy to use. One benefit of it is that you can easily click around to not only see your friends’ comments but also what friends they have as well. It’s faster than using Digg’s interface to access your comments, especially if you comment regularly.


11. Social Blade Frontpage Data

This is an online tool which allows you to analyze frontpage stories and determine a host of factors related to the tipping point when a story goes popular. It records down the exact number of diggs when the story went popular as well as % of friends who dugg the story, along with the category and other elements.


12. Update Scanner

Not really a Digg tool but a firefox extension I use for digg and other social media sites. This firefox extension monitors web pages for updates. This is useful for websites that don’t provide Atom or RSS feeds. Sometimes it allows you to grab and submit new stories or articles before other Digg users.




I didn’t include most of the sidebar/online widgets and statistic tools because I didn’t find them useful. This list is intentionally concise because I’ve only included the ones I feel are really fundamental to efficient and active Digg usage.

I’ve also left out a few tools which I don’t want to include, simply because some of them might be more advanced and not suitable for casual/semi-active Digg users. Perhaps I’ll mention them in a future article on how I use Digg on a daily basis.

Hope you find these tools helpful and feel free to share what you think of them. For future reference, feel free to bookmark this article at del.icio.us

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