Betaworks Previews New Version of Digg

When Kevin Rose's social news site Digg for far less than the tens of millions poured into it over the years by venture capitalists, the verdict by some in Silicon Valley was that Digg was not only finished, but would count as an epic Web 2.0 cautionary tale. But Betaworks—the company that recently acquired Digg—has a different storyline in mind for Digg, and the first peek at that vision has just surfaced.

The first images of what the new version of Digg will look like were posted hours ago by Betaworks, and the layout and approach are quite a departure from the site's old, bulletin board style. In place of simple text links and vote counts, visitors will see large images, a more spacious layout, and bold, crisp headlines. The new look is partly the result of Betawork's decision to include the audience in the site's rebirth.

RethinkDigg is a site the company launched to get feedback from hardcore Digg fans, past and present. Wasting no time, the team posted a survey asking, with granular detail, what the users wanted from Digg's new incarnation, prompting 3,754 responses.

Rose, , has been mostly hands off of Digg for some time now. But in an interesting meeting that would foreshadow Digg's fate, Rose sat down last year for a long interview with Betaworks CEO John Borthwick for his Foundation podcast (below). The wide-ranging discussion covered everything from startup stories to investment strategies, but more than anything the meeting revealed the admiration Rose has for Borthwick's approach and sterling track record.

"I've always been a fan of John [Borthwick's] product vision and the companies he builds, funds, and advises," Rose said after the Betaworks acquisition. "John understands the real-time nature of the Web and how to capture and surface trends as they occur. Given his experience with bit.ly, news.me, and Chartbeat I can't wait to see what he does with Digg."

Betaworks has invested in companies such as Airbnb, Bitly, Kickstarter, Path, Tumblr and others.

As for the new design, just last week Rose, who had just seen the early mock-ups, told Gigaom, "I love the design. It’s very simple, and there’s a lot of emphasis on real-time. It’s very bare bones, but in a good way."

The new team has promised to release a new Digg iPhone app as well as a tablet-optimized version of Digg sometime next month, while the new version of the site itself is scheduled to debut on Aug. 1.