Google's announcement to ditch Reader took a number of faithful users by surprise yesterday including the team over at Digg. But rather than scour the web for a suitable replacement, the once-thriving social news website has decided to build their own rich site summary (RSS) reader.
Digg's implementation will take the best elements of Google's offering (including its API) and advance them to fit the Internet of 2013. The site notes that networks and communities like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit and Hacker News are all great destinations to find what's interesting on the web but are often overwhelming.
According to a post on Digg's official blog, the company was planning to build their own reader later this year but given Google's recent announcement, they have moved the project to the top of their priority list. They are confident they can come up with a worthy successor but in order to pull it off in such a small window, they will need some help.
Digg is asking their readers for input on what they want to see in a reader. They want to know what problems it should solve for you, what's useful and what isn't and what you wish Google Reader could do that isn't already possible today.
Digg was one of the hottest destinations on the net during its pinnacle, once eyed by Google for $200 million but a number of miscues over the years essentially left the site in shambles. A large majority of the site's technology team was hired by The Washington Post just before Betaworks purchased the remnants last July for $500,000. The site was then rebuilt from scratch although it's far from what it once was during its prime.